Ben Shattuck’s acclaimed collection of short stories The History of Sound is the winner of the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
‘Chosen from 148 books submitted by a wide range of publishers, The History of Sound presents a dozen interlocking stories, situated in various New England locales over three centuries and deploying a “hook-and-chain” motif, in which an element in one story connects with an element in a previous, paired story. In the title story, two young musicians newly in love spend the fall of 1919 recording folks songs on a trek through Maine; in the companion story, set 75 years later, a woman cleaning out a house discovers the wax cylinders on which those songs were recorded – and her own romantic quandaries link her unbeknownst to the protagonists of long ago, through the theme of a devastating regret.
Steeped in Americana, The History of Sound investigates the mysteriousness of found objects – old letters, a bird’s egg stored in an attic, unexpected artifacts hidden away in chimneys or beneath floorboards – that link characters and destinies across centuries. Its exquisite ironies are delivered in a seemingly simple prose that conveys the tantalizing elusiveness of the past and the enormity of Time.
The judges on the MTAVL panel praised The History of Sound for the precision, elegance and poignance of its writing. “This is some of the loveliest prose I have read in quite some time,” noted one judge. “And the most vivid and absorbing world-building. Nantucket is so well evoked, I almost shook the book for sand.”
“Shattuck’s fiction is an absolutely still pond into which he tosses small pebbles that create beautiful ripples,” another judge commented. “He’s a delicate miniaturist who keeps gigantic forces in the background; he addresses both the stuff of our daily lives, and the largest arcs of destiny, with equal sympathy and adroitness.” A third judge cited the stories’ melancholy and at times dryly humorous insights. “These linked short stories are made up of fleeting, quiet moments that reveal ourselves to ourselves. In forgotten corners of history, Shattuck has found mystery and beauty, and in The History of Sound his art is testimony celebrating our complex humanity.”
The 2025 MATVL Finalist Panel of Judges includes novelist Phil Klay, novelist and memoirist Esmeralda Santiago, 2024 MTAVL recipient Alice McDermott, Twain scholar Lawrence Howe, and critic and short story writer Rand Richards Cooper.’
The 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award celebration will take place on Friday, November 7th.