Many of Holland’s characters are similarly preoccupied with loss. For the most part, they are unnamed men recalling a brief flare of exalted beauty and feeling. In ‘The City Lost to Heaven’, a Western man seeks a former companion among the rumour and grime of Beijing’s hutongs. ‘In the City of Exiles’ imagines a meeting between Homer and Isaiah, during which the Greek poet reminisces about the night he spent as a victorious soldier in a strange city.

The title’s elegant melancholy echoes throughout the collection, as Holland’s protagonists pursue the elusive source of their defining memory. Yet not all the tales are as successful as ‘The Source of the Silence’. Though the stories are predominantly realist in mode, some of the dialogue does not render as natural. One’s immersion in the collection is also undermined by surprisingly numerous editorial flaws, including typographical errors, stray punctuation, and confusion of homophones.

Despite their uneven execution, The Source of the Sound’s investigations into loss, faith, and truth form a thematically coherent whole. When they work, Holland’s narratives illuminate the Sisyphean task of seeking something that can never be found.