SHIP SOONER

Sheila "Ship" Sooner, a 13-year-old girl born with "exceptional hearing," can hear conversations whispered behind closed doors, the flutter of other people's eyelids and even the heartbeat of her best friend and neighbor, Brian Dodd. She wears ear caps to dampen the unbearable loudness of the world (smoke alarms and passing trains leave her howling in pain), removing the headphone-like device only to spy, along with Brian, on the citizens of 1970s Herringtown, Mass. But just because Ship hears everything doesn't mean the overinformed, socially awkward adolescent understands it. She feels singularly distant from her high-heel–clad mother, Teresa, who is loving but preoccupied with petty gossip and men, and her older, cheerleader sister, Helen. When Teresa is called to care for a sick friend, her increasingly long absences, joined with Helen's cruelty and Brian's mysterious disappearance, leave Ship adrift. Ship's acute hearing causes her to make a startling discovery, and the rest of the novel follows her confused wanderings as she tries blindly to care for someone even more helpless than herself while she searches for Brian. Ship's misadventures are increasingly unlikely, but the compelling characters carefully developed in the first half—not to mention the evocative descriptions of Ship's "miracle hearing" ("A lighter snaps open, then a flame licks up, followed by the burn, the hiss, and the singe of Trudy's cigarette")—hold the reader's interest to the end. (Feb.)