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Hark: How Women Listen
AN INDEPENDENT 'BEST BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025'
'Alice Vincent is on song' -KATHERINE MAY
'Stimulating and humane' -AMY LIPTROT
'This book is a quiet and profound kind of miracle' -CLOVER STROUD
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. A rapid, pulsing whoosh of white noise. An undeniable rhythm. Once again, Alice’s life became cacophonous – both with a new child, but also with the societal pressures that motherhood holds.
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 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. Hark is a book for women who feel unheard and a means of listening more deeply in a world that has grown too loud.
'Alice Vincent is on song' -KATHERINE MAY
'Stimulating and humane' -AMY LIPTROT
'This book is a quiet and profound kind of miracle' -CLOVER STROUD
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. A rapid, pulsing whoosh of white noise. An undeniable rhythm. Once again, Alice’s life became cacophonous – both with a new child, but also with the societal pressures that motherhood holds.
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 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. Hark is a book for women who feel unheard and a means of listening more deeply in a world that has grown too loud.
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
312 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2025
24 people are currently reading
318 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 14, 2025
This is an amazing book. It is all about what, how and when we hear and listen. It covers the importance of timing, knowing and interpreting the speaker, vibrations, instinct and mother nature. Oh and echoes, too. Running through the book is a the strand that the author Alice Vincent has a small baby who was critically ill in his early months and how matrescence and the experience of his illness changes hearing and relationships with sound and sound in your life. This book really has changed my thinking about sound.
April 17, 2025
I very much enjoyed this exploration of sound and listening from a female perspective. This doesn't initially sound like an interesting subject, however I found the book to be beautifully written and so very heartfelt in its honesty, particularly around early motherhood. Raw and unflinching, yet hopeful and ultimately uplifting.
With grateful thanks to Canongate Books and to NetGalley for my advance ebook copy in exchange for an honest review.
With grateful thanks to Canongate Books and to NetGalley for my advance ebook copy in exchange for an honest review.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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