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The Hearing Test Is a Pitch-Perfect Novel About Loss

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If you haven’t set up a password with us yet or need to change an existing one, go here. If you prefer to log in without a password, you can receive a sign-in code instead. Tired of trying to remember your password? Enter the email address associated with your account to receive a verification code and log in with ease. Enter the verification code we sent to If your subscription is tied to a Google email, you can log in via your Google account. If your institution has a subscription, you can obtain access with Single Sign-On. Our spring issue, “Progress,” was just released. Subscribe in print today. In Eliza Callahan’s debut novel, The Hearing Test, a woman develops sudden deafness shortly before her 30th birthday. What follows is a story about loss and aging, but without the self-indulgence common to the millennial novel. It’s a difficult thing to write about a person undergoing a traumatic event in the first person and avoid claustrophobic introspection. (Vitalii Barida / Getty I

Eliza Callahan’s debut novel, The Hearing Test, opens with a preface in which the narrator’s friend encourages her to watch the 1967 Soviet film July Rain. When she looks it up online, she finds the following description: The heroes of this film are almost thirty and that very often at this time people have a period of revision of the positions already developed earlier. That is sometimes associated with loss. . . . That she loses her former closest person who becomes a stranger and distant. If this summary scans a little oddly it is because it’s a translation, she tells us. The narrator…

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