A good test of a writer is to take a high concept and stretch it. In The Hearing Test, the debut novel by American Eliza Barry Callahan, a young woman loses her hearing – or most of it – without warning. One day, she hears a “deep drone”, and then her hearing is all “rolling thunder… like God adjusting his piano stool but never getting around to the song”.
When having her sudden deafness investigated, doctors tell her she has sudden deafness, a diagnosis that reiterates the question it seeks to answer. The problem is intimately close but impossible to resolve. “We can get to the moon, but we can’t get to the inner ear,” she’s told. As a result, her treatment is “a work of improvisation. Like jazz.”
