Hark : How Women Listen – Alice Vincent

Hardback

320 pages

Canongate

ISBN: 9781805302063

We're told women are good at listening, but we rarely examine what they're listening to, what their worlds sound like, or how it feels to be expected to listen in a world of noise made by men. Like so many of us, Alice Vincent had become overwhelmed by the sensory overload punctuating our every moment. And then, a baby's heartbeat arrived.

What followed was a personal quest to rediscover sound as something alive and vital and restorative. Beyond music, Alice's journey takes her into new corners of listening: from the phantom crying heard by mothers across the world to the nightingale's song and the crackle of the Aurora Borealis. As our attention spans shrink and our sense of disconnection grows, Alice wants to find out if sound - seeking it, trying to hold on to it, making space for it in her life - can reconnect her not only to lost parts of herself but to a life more consciously lived.