The Sound Mirror is an elegantly constructed easy-reading hard book. The short chapters, loaded with the confusion of past and current pain, can be pondered one by one, or devoured in accelerating frenzy. The lives move on so quickly, irreparable damage is done in instants, and everyone just lives the way they can until they can’t. There are nice turns of phrase: “music crystallised like sugar”. The philosophy is upfront and centre: “History is a halter that leads, we’re beasts of burden with a ring though our nose”. The women are believable, the men are unexplored, part of the environment, either benign or damaging, like the weather. This is not a criticism, since this is a book about women. It is neither sugar-coated nor sensationalist, carefully pitched in its handling of trauma. The sense is of anger and sympathy, of painful acknowledgement, of surviving; and ultimately of the chance if not the certainty of manumission, of travelling through and coming out the other side to healing. I’m reminded again of the dread joyous responsibility of being a parent to young children. I expect it will reward re-reading. Recommended.
