Fifty Sounds, Polly Barron
Polly Barton, a translator of Japanese into English, structures her memoir not according to chronology, to memory or to a hierarchy of experiences but according to the onomatopoeic sounds (originally fifty, now actually forty-six) that order the kana, the phonetic characters that make up a portion of written Japanese.
Each sound, its meaning, significance and history, is an organic frame for an event or experience from her own life – moving to Japan as a young woman, falling in love with a person and a place, her disappointments and failures, her curiosity and delight.
The ‘fifty sounds’ tell a story, one that is funny, sad, recognisable, surprising. Polly Barton’s reading enables us to hear not just the fifty sounds, but Polly herself.
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