For centuries the seas around Scotland were notorious for shipwrecks. Mariners' only aids were skill, luck, and single coal-fire light on the east coast, which was usually extinguished by rain. In 1786 the Northern Lighthouse Trust was established, with Robert Stevenson appointed as chief engineer a few years later. In this engrossing book, Bella Bathhurst reveals that the Stevensons not only supervised the construction of the lighthouses under often desperate conditions but also perfected a design of precisely chiseled interlocking granite blocks that would withstand the enormous waves that batter these stone pillars. The same Stevensons also developed the lamps and lenses of the lights themselves, which sent a gleam across the wave and prevented countless ships from being lost at sea.

While it is the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson that brought fame to the family name, this memorizing account shows how his extraordinary ancestors changed the shape of the Scotland coast-against incredible odds and with remarkable technical ingenuity.

Bathurst is a restless, curious writer... After reading this book, I found myself listening in a richer and more interested way. -- Guardian

A profound, beautifully written exploration of sound by a young woman who lost her hearing, then regained it.

In this surprising and moving book, award-winning writer Bella Bathurst shares the extraordinary true story of how she lost her hearing and eventually regained it and what she learned from her twelve years of deafness. Diving into a wide-ranging exploration of silence and noise, she interviews psychologists, ear surgeons, and professors to uncover fascinating insights about the science of sound. But she also speaks with ordinary people who are deaf or have lost their hearing, including musicians, war veterans, and factory workers, to offer a perceptive, thought-provoking look at what sound means to us.

If sight gives us the world, then hearing--or our ability to listen--gives us our connections with other people. But, as this smart, funny, and profoundly honest examination reveals, our relationship with sound is both more personal and far more complex than we might expect.

A group of schoolgirls go off with two teachers on a field trip to the English countryside. They soon discover that the nearby town offers alcohol, drugs, and sex, at once tempting and terrifying. In this illicit, raw new world, isolated from the larger society and its familiar rules and repressions, some become more vulnerable, others more vicious. There are the almost casual daily cruelties the girls inflict on one another, the dangerous fault lines of their friendships, their insecurities and little shames, the awful power of the most popular girl and of the in crowd. The sexual and social pressures that can break a girl emotionally and even physically and mark her forever are freshly and chillingly observed. Many readers will be reminded of Lord of the Flies. In Special, too, the shell of civilization is paper-thin, and the looming implosion of a tiny society inspires dread.
It is not the unfamiliar countryside but the untried emotional landscape these girls must negotiate that proves difficult and disturbing and leads to a shattering conclusion. This is a spellbinding, haunting novel by a brilliant young writer.

A moving and fascinating book about sound and what it means to be human from the Somerset Maugham Award-winning author of The Lighthouse Stevensons (Financial Times).

In this surprising and moving book, award-winning writer Bella Bathurst shares the extraordinary true story of how she lost her hearing and eventually regained it and what she learned from her twelve years of deafness. Diving into a wide-ranging exploration of silence and noise, she interviews psychologists, ear surgeons, and professors to uncover fascinating insights about the science of sound. But she also speaks with ordinary people who are deaf or have lost their hearing, including musicians, war veterans, and factory workers, to offer a perceptive, thought-provoking look at what sound means to us.

If sight gives us the world, then hearing--or our ability to listen--gives us our connections with other people. But, as this smart, funny, and profoundly honest examination reveals, our relationship with sound is both more personal and far more complex than we might expect.

Bathurst is a restless, curious writer . . . After reading this book, I found myself listening in a richer and more interested way. --The Guardian

A hymn to the faculty of hearing by someone who had it, lost it and then found it again, written with passion and intelligence . . . terrifying, absorbing and ultimately uplifting. --Literary Review

Bathurst's affecting memoir will enlighten and educate. --Publishers Weekly

A memoir of hearing loss and what the author learned . . . through her unexpected recovery from it. A good writer knows material when it presents itself, and Bathurst is a very good writer. --Kirkus Reviews