The Automaton Ear, and Other Sketches

A collection of short sketches and tales that range from speculative experiments in acoustics to intimate rural portraits and oblique supernatural or melancholic moments. Several pieces follow an inventor's obsessive attempt to devise an apparatus that captures lingering sounds, while others present seaside and village scenes, funeral and domestic vignettes, and character studies of wanderers, old craftsmen, and the sick. Across varied settings the narratives emphasize curiosity, memory, mortality, and the small dramas of everyday life, delivered in concise, observational prose that alternates irony, sympathy, and quiet unease.