A Sound Like Someone Trying not to Make a Sound

A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound

John Irving 1998

I've actually never read any of John Irving's books.  In the introduction, he explains that the origin of this book came from a character from his novel A Widow for One Year who wrote children's stories.  A German publisher convinced him to publish one and so A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound came out.  

The title is fantastic and perfectly describes that creepy curious feeling of waking up in the middle of the night to an unexplained sound.  And so Tom wanders through the house in the dark telling his father that he heard something, like someone pulling the nails out of the floorboards under the bed.  It was a sound like a dog trying to open a door.  It was a sound like a ghost in the attic, dropping the peanuts it had stolen from the kitchen.