The Shape of Sound: A Memoir

Australian essayist Murphy debuts with an eloquent if uneven story about living with her hearing loss. In a four-part narrative laced with poetic prose, she charts her experience with deafness—from being diagnosed as partially deaf at age six to the “exhaustion” she felt in high school and university attempting to keep her disability a secret (her excuses for mishearing things: “blocked ears, endless head colds, a habit of day-dreaming”). A two-week trial with hearing aids in her 20s offered hope, but after feeling “harrowed by sound,” Murphy rejected them. As she recounts classroom attempts to learn sign language and fearing ridicule from the Deaf community (“Are half-deaf people allowed to call themselves Deaf?”), she dives into the intricacies of deafness, physiologically and culturally, weaving in medical studies with ruminations on others, including Winston Churchill, who’ve downplayed their disabilities to avoid being “discounted.” In 2019, after finding other Deaf people on Twitter, Murphy eventually embraced her identity, and updated her bio to announce “that I was Deaf.” Curiously, though, a paid instructor is the only real-life Deaf acquaintance mentioned in the book, and while her meticulous writing on the culture offers enlightening passages, it often feels expository and distant. Murphy’s insights illuminate a world of jarring discordance, yet ambivalence clots the emotional heart of this memoir. (Apr.)