Review: THE HEARING TEST

Title: The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan

Book Beginnings quote:

On August 29, 2019, I was meant to travel to Venice to watch a lifelong friend get married -- a small reception for just ten people.

Friday56 quote:

The signal had been cutting in and out, so to speak, and a perpetual static had arrived and stayed with me -- like a radio station no one claims to run.

Summary: 

When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning [the morning she is meant to travel to Venice for the wedding] to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with sudden deafness but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year—a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned—while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog. (Publisher)

Review: I can't remember how I heard about The Hearing Test or whose review piqued my interest in it, but when I saw the print book on a library shelf as I walked by I thought, "ah, here's a book I want to read." That does not speak well of my researching skills because I really only knew one thing -- the main character was struck by sudden deafness. What I didn't know was the book was written in stream-of-consciousness style and that there was actually very little about the hearing loss and the actual hearing-exams, but more about these odd interaction she had all year with people and the out-there-grasping-at-straws types of treatments she kept getting talked into trying. The book was just about as odd as I'm making it sound.

The Hearing Test is considered autofiction since the author experienced sudden onset deafness in 2019, just a few months before the pandemic set in. Perhaps her decision to avoid talking about the unnamed character's treatments, if there were any, and focus on weird interactions, relates to her own experiences with increasing deafness. Or maybe it related to how difficult it was for people to get in to see doctors during the pandemic. I don't know if this is the case or not. 

There were moments of beautiful writing which I really appreciated. For example this excerpt is a reflection by the narrator upon seeing her old boyfriend:

Seeing him, I felt homesick for myself. As if I were a place that could be returned to (142).

After a moment of self-reflection she realizes she is slipping into denial:

This was what the doctor said to avoid. And then came a complete sadness that was very still and contained and twinkling, like water to a well. And this sadness felt in this moment like the greatest possible relief(153).

I rarely regret it when I've completed a book, and I don't regret reading this one. But I will not be recommending this book to anyone, especially to my friend who has recently loss a good potion of her hearing after puncturing her eardrums. This book would not be helpful for her.

My rating: 3 stars.

-Anne