Review by Tess Tabak

Sound Bella BathurstIn Sound: A Memoir of Hearing Lost and Found, Bella Bathurst explores what is lost besides sound when we go deaf late in life. A journalistic curiosity coupled with personal experience make this a nuanced look at hearing across a wide range of subjects. She covers not just deafness and the way society treats the deaf, but a look at the mechanics and meaning of sound itself.

Bathurst was working as a journalist when she began to lose her hearing. She noticed that her interview skills suffered when she couldn’t hear subjects as clearly. Worse, she began to isolate herself from friends, unwilling to go out to noisy clubs or restaurants where she’d spend the night struggling to understand a few words. She writes heartbreakingly about her own depression: “I also made the discovery that there’s more than one way to kill yourself. There’s the active way, where you go out to seek death. […] Or there’s the passive way, where you just stand there on the threshold holding the door open.” (117).

However, miraculously, Bathurst regained her hearing after 12 years. Her experience as someone on both sides of hearing loss give her a unique perspective on the subject. Being able to hear again after over a decade of deafness made her appreciate sound. Continue reading