Bowen’s novels and short stories operate through an infrastructure of sound that includes technological conduits such as telephones and radios, as well as material and environmental media that produce, amplify, or distort sound. This sonic infrastructure governs the circulation of information. It also determines who hears what and what gets lost in transmission. Each of Bowen’s works generates a soundscape that embodies its historical and political context. For example, ‘Summer Night’, a short story set in Ireland during the Second World War, amplifies conversations, mechanical noise, and the resonance of domestic spaces as if close-miking the soundscape for bits of information. Instead of being a background element in the texture of her fiction, sound is integral to the construction of her narratives. Sound informs Bowen’s literary style: her writing directs the reader’s ear and, in doing so, demands to be listened to.