Hark

How Women Listen

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Pub Date 1 May 2025 | Archive Date 7 May 2025

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Description

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 listening: 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.

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.

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Advance Praise

“I loved this exploration of the ways that sound lands in female bodies. Alice Vincent is on song” -KATHERINE MAY

“Hark not only made me cry, it opened my ears to new kinds of understanding. Gorgeously written, truly sensuous, gut-wrenchingly powerful, heartfelt and real, this is a deeply important book, alive and tuned in to the beautiful cacophony of the world. Hark is Alice Vincent’s best book yet” -CHARLOTTE RUNICE

“A beautiful book, which left me thinking deeply and intimately about my own sonically-charged life” -AMY KEY

“I loved this exploration of the ways that sound lands in female bodies. Alice Vincent is on song” -KATHERINE MAY

“Hark not only made me cry, it opened my ears to new kinds of understanding...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781837261246
PRICE £10.99 (GBP)
PAGES 320

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Average rating from 4 members


Featured Reviews

A beautiful, compelling read that lives up to the high hopes I had after reading Vincent's earlier work. Wonderfully written, it was an insightful look at a new stage of life by a must-read author.

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An absolutely stunning exploration of sound, listening and early motherhood. I read this breathlessly, racing through the pages, finding much to savour but also desperate to inhale more. I've not read anything yet that so beautifully articulated my first months of being a parent.

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Probably Alice Vincent's most personally candid book, this time with a focus on the major life-change that is motherhood and the ambivalent emotions that arise during the process. The thread that runs through is that of listening. Triggered by an emergency hospital visit which becomes a traumatic event, Vincent begins to find the cries of her child too much to bear. It's a profound and prolific exploration of what it means to listen and really hear, how women tend to listen with their entire bodies and what that means – for the nervous system, for empathy, for extra-sensory perception, for connecting to something larger than ourselves – as well as documenting the path she takes to put what happened at the hospital into perspective with a vital examination of how PTSD manifests. I loved it and I loved all the interviews with women from wide and varying walks of life. I'll be thinking about and researching the ideas covered in this book for a long time to come.

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Hark: How Women Listen by Alice Vincent is a deeply reflective exploration of sound, listening, and the often overlooked experiences of women in a world dominated by noise. Vincent, through her journey into motherhood and the overwhelming sensory overload of modern life, delves into what women listen to, how they are expected to listen, and what it means to reclaim the power of sound in a world that frequently drowns out their voices.

After the arrival of her child, Vincent finds herself surrounded by constant noise, both from the physical world and from societal expectations placed on her as a mother. Yet, amid this cacophony, she embarks on a quest to rediscover the restorative and life-affirming qualities of sound. From the intimate and universal experience of a baby’s heartbeat to the ethereal song of nightingales and the distant hum of the Aurora Borealis, Vincent explores the diverse ways in which sound can reconnect us to ourselves, others, and the world around us.

The book is a meditation on how women have often been conditioned to listen, whether to the demands of others or the unspoken messages embedded in society’s expectations. It also asks whether, by reclaiming our capacity to listen deeply, we can reconnect to a more meaningful existence.

Hark is an evocative, personal, and ultimately empowering work. It speaks to those who feel unheard, providing both a gentle invitation and a challenge to listen more intently in a world that too often fails to listen back.

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