"A radiant, pitch-perfect story of perseverance and hope as a young musician learns to live with becoming deaf"
Stewart Foster, author of LoveReading favourites Check Mates and The Bubble Boy, has done it again with Can You Feel the Noise?, an incredibly honest, moving, insightful exploration of hearing loss, family support, friendship, and the magic of music.
Sophie has wonderfully supportive, loving parents, a great bunch of friends in her band-mates, and she’s thrilled to have made it to the semi-finals of the local Battle of the Bands contest. Life couldn’t be sunnier, until the morning she wakes up unable to hear - after a few months experiencing some auditory problems, the world has gone utterly silent.
Based on his personal experience of hearing impairment, the author’s evocation of Sophie’s frustration, bewilderment and fears is extraordinarily powerful. Authentic and suffused in empathy, all young readers will be able to relate to Sophie’s feelings, with additional benefits for readers who might have experienced what she’s going through.
While tests reveal that her hearing will never be what it was, her doctor offers some hope, but really it falls to Sophie to find a way through this new state of being, and boy does she do just that. Navigating new ways of being with her friends, and finding new friendship in unexpected places, Sophie’s journey shows her to be wise beyond her years: “Just because I couldn’t hear, it didn’t mean I had to stop writing. It just meant I might write about different things, and different feelings. And right now, the feeling I had most was, This is Amazing!”
But this novel is nothing but honest, and there’s no simple, easy path. Sophie digs deep to take brave decisions regarding her treatment, and her identity, too. A talented guitarist, she discovers new magic through drums and the power of percussive vibrations. What a beautiful book.
