A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving … solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.
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THE ART OF HEARING HEARTBEATS by Jan-Philipp Sendker
Years after Julia Win’s father deserts her and her mother she decides to journey to Burma, his country of descent, in the hope of finding him. Upon arrival in his hometown of Kawal she is sitting in a tea room, trying to decide where to start her search when she is approached by a man who somehow knows her name.
During the course of several meetings between them he relates her father’s story in intricate detail. She only learns his identity at the end of the book, but what Julia discovers is that her father lived a life until the age of twenty that was literally a world apart from the one he lived with her and her mother in London.
For one thing, he was blind. Much of the story explores the world of the sightless boy and how he learns to cope, with the help of the cripple Mi Mi, acquiring extraordinary hearing that allows him to become acutely aware of the sounds others take for granted, like the differences between individual heartbeats. Sendker’s description of exaggerated sounds – of a spider eating a fly, or the tapping of a bird’s beak inside an egg – assumes mystical qualities.
Julia’s feelings of rejection by her father make way for her eventual understanding that love has many faces, and that we, at times, wish to be loved only as we ourselves would love.
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is ultimately about a great love story, told with sensitivity and imagination. I enjoyed reading it, and getting to know a little more about life in Burma.
This book keeps one enthralled and warms the cockles and other body parts with its story of a daughter searching for her father.
Beautifully written. Such a moving story. Enjoyed every single page.
I highly recommend it to all literature lovers.
I think I’ve mentioned that for me “reading” has become a luxury the likes of which I sometimes even avoid. Not sure why really, except maybe anger at myself for spending so much time on bad books–badly written, lazily edited, simply or more likely horrifically plotted–I’ve gotten to where I just don’t want to bother anymore simply not to run the risk of feeling like it was time wasted.
As a writer myself, I see the puppet strings, the skeletal framework, and at times feel the sweat and tears that have been poured into every line. And that just wears me out.
Then, when I listen to my mother and read a book she insists that I simply must, I am never disappointed. The last book I raved about here: What Alice Forgot, was such a book.
So is the Art of Hearing Heartbeats. Never has so much been said in so few lines. So much tenderness, sweet sexual awakening, and sheer joy expressed with an incredible economy of actual words — it makes me want to sit and stare at the walls and roll the story around in my head over and over again.
A tender coming of age tale, wrapped up in a modern woman’s journey to find out the truth about her mysterious, exotic and ultimately unreachable father, this book will mesmerize you with its many poetic turns of phrase. But in the end you will feel like a better person for having experienced a love story that spans ages, continents, cultures and families.
I am sorry I had to finish it. But feel like a better human, and hopefully a better writer, for having done it in one sitting.
I read part of this book and didn’t like it at all. It moves too slow for me and just did not enjoy the “mystic” story teller.
This is the story of Julia who goes to Burma in search of the father that abandoned her and her mother. She has never forgiven him but wanted to know why. She has found a love letter among her father’s things, to a woman she has never known. Julia need to know the answer to her father’s disappearance from her life, so she heads to the village where the woman supposedly lives.
She meets a man who promises to tell her the story of her father and who knows of the woman, so she agrees to listen if it means she gets her answers. In listening to the story, she uncovers her father’s past and a love that spanned a lifetime.
I thought this book was wonderful. I had a hard time putting it down, because I was enjoying listening to the story of Julia’s father’s childhood and how he met the love of his life. Julia’s father was blind as a child for many, many years, and since my own daughter is legally blind, this hit a cord. I enjoyed reading his resilience to his sudden blindness and how he still found friendship, and love. And in the end, we learn who the man is and how he knows the story of Julia’s father which ended the book perfectly.
I encourage you to pick up this book and read it.
A wonderful book, so detailed and beautifully told. The author stated that when he wrote it, it was as if he was a medium and someone was telling him the story to write.
Most of it takes place in a small town in Burma, and throughout this story, one will experience many hardships, but also many amazing feats and a strong sense of unconditional love. The characters are well developed and I followed their stories with anticipation. From a father who disappears from NYC to a daughter who goes in search of him and all of the people in between, their stories takes us on a wonderful trip into a different culture.
Why am I the last person to hear about THE ART OF HEARING HEARTBEATS? This book is life-changing, it’s so beautiful. It’s a sweeping tale with a swoon-y love story and a bit of a mystery. Also has some of the best disabled rep I’ve seen in… ever. The audiobook is amazing too. Read it now!
Beautiful and highly original, joyful and tragic. A poignant description of a love that transcended time and place, becoming a spiritual legend of love, commemorated yearly by an Asian village culture. Deeply touching!
We read this book for our book club and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.