The Sound of the Bells · Ebook
A short novel about Michael, who is given a terminal diagnosis and a recurring dream, and follows the dream: to an island, a temple, and the sound of a thousand bells.
4.9 · 7 ratings · "Like experiencing Paulo Coelho's best works." · Drew
Everyone has imagined it: leaving the phone, the meetings, the name, and simply walking out.
Mostly we don't, because it is not really the life we want to leave. It is the suffering that runs through it: the pressure, the performance, the quiet sense that none of it is quite us.
Michael gets the push no one asks for. After a terminal diagnosis, he walks out of the hospital, past his old life, and boards a plane with no return ticket, following a dream that will not stop returning.
The Sound of the Bells is the story of what he finds.
What this book is
This is the author's only story-book, grown from an old parable about temple bells that he first heard from Anthony de Mello. It reads the way parables do: simple on the surface, deeper each time you stop. And readers say they stop often, mid-page, to sit with a line.
There is a personal weight behind it too. The book was finished as a tribute to a dear friend the author lost, and it faces loss and dying without flinching, and without heaviness. The subtitle is a promise kept: this is a story of the end of suffering, not of the end.
You don't need a journey.
You only need to turn within.
The story
Without giving anything away:
A hospital ceiling
A man who built an empire wakes from surgery with more plans than time.
The dream
A storm, an island, and a temple of a thousand bells that keeps ringing after he wakes.
The leaving
He walks out of the hospital, past his old life, and boards a plane with no return ticket.
The encounters
An old man, a dancer, a cigarette-shop keeper: strangers met along the way, each one loosening a knot.
The notebook
Months later, a package with no sender arrives at his successor's desk.
Good to know
A short novel: an evening or two of reading, and the kind of ending that sends you back to page one.
Honestly
Questions
Is it fiction?
Yes, the author's only novel. The story is invented; what it points at is not. As the book itself puts it, a story is the shortest distance between a human being and truth.
Is it heavy? It is about dying.
It faces dying honestly, and readers report the opposite of heaviness. The subtitle is the promise: a story of the end of suffering, not of the end.
Do I need to know the author's other books?
No. It stands completely alone, and for story-lovers it may be the best door into his writing.
How long is it?
A short novel of about 125 pages: an evening or two, read at its own walking pace.
Can I read some of it first?
Yes. There is a free preview of the opening chapter, and the paperback is on Amazon if you prefer paper.
Begin
They only need someone to stop and listen. The preview is free if you want to hear how the story opens.