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Soundtrack of Silence

Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

This program is read by the author.
An inspiring memoir of a young man who discovered he was going completely deaf just at the moment he'd fallen in love for the first time.

As a child, Matt Hay didn't know his hearing wasn't the way everyone else processed sound—because of the workarounds he did to fit in, even the school nurse didn't catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But by the time he was a prospective college student and couldn't pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay's condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast.
A personal soundtrack was Hay's determined compensation for his condition. As a typical Midwestern kid growing up in the 1980s whose life events were pegged to pop music, Hay planned to commit his favorite songs to memory. He prepared a mental playlist of the bands he loved and created a way to tap into his most resonant memories. And the track he needed to cement most clearly? The one he and his new girlfriend, Nora—the love of his life—listened to in the car on their first date.
Made vivid with references to instantly recognizable songs—from the Eagles to Elton John, Bob Marley to Bing Crosby, U2 to Peter Frampton—Soundtrack of Silence asks listeners to run the soundtrack of their own lives through their minds. It's an involving memoir of loss and disability, and, ultimately, a both unique and universal love story.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 30, 2023
      Hay centers his poignant debut on a tantalizing question: “If the rest of your life had to be lived in silence, what sounds would you want to remember?” After learning that his diagnosis with neurofibromatosis would eventually render him completely deaf, Hay leaned into his lifelong love of pop music and resolved to create a playlist of songs he never wants to forget. During his Midwest childhood, Hay “barely noticed when the upper register” of sounds made by power tools, lawn equipment, or rifles “disappeared completely”; it wasn’t until he failed a West Point hearing exam that he realized something was wrong. Alongside the details of how he’s learned to compensate for his condition by reading lips and other methods, Hay sharply articulates the ways in which going deaf plays tricks on the mind: “The thing about gradual hearing loss is that you forget when you used to hear something that you no longer can,” he writes at one point. Elsewhere, Hay praises the devotion of his wife, Nora, who inspired many of his playlist picks, and explores the significance to their relationship of songs by the Eagles, Bing Crosby, and Prince. While Hay doesn’t sugarcoat his circumstances—he unsparingly recounts his lengthy recovery from multiple brain surgeries, for example—his optimism in the face of adversity is stirring. This moving memoir makes magic out of facing the music.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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