Jellyfish Have No Ears

Ever since she was a child, Louise has been not quite hearing and not quite deaf—her life with this invisible disability has been one of in-betweenness. After an audiology test shows that almost all her hearing is gone, her doctor suggests a cochlear implant. This irreversible operation would give Louise a new sense of hearing—but it would come at the expense of her natural hearing, which has shaped her relationship with the world, full of whispers and shadows.

Hearing, for Louise, is inseparable from reading other people’s lips. Through sight, she perceives words and strings them together like pearls to reconstruct a conversation. When the string breaks, misunderstandings result and eccentric images fill her thoughts. As she weighs the prospect of surgery, fabulous characters begin to accompany her: a damaged soldier from World War I, an irritable dog, and a whimsical botanist.

With Jellyfish Have No Ears, Adèle Rosenfeld shines an extraordinary light on the black hole of losing a sense and on the vibrancy that can arise to fill the void.

“Will a cochlear implant change the way one unforgettable young woman experiences the world? Adèle Rosenfeld’s narrator grapples with this question as she navigates work, love, and her own unruly imagination. In lush, startling prose, made vivid by Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation, her agonizing choice becomes relevant to us all.”—Nell Freudenberger