The Listeners

Description

Fans of The Power will love this addictive novel' Stylist A masterful speculative novel exploring the fine lines between faith, conspiracy, and mania in contemporary America. While lying in bed next to her husband one night, Claire Devon hears a low hum that he cannot. And, it seems, no one else can either. This innocuous noise begins causing Claire headaches, nosebleeds, insomnia, gradually upsetting the balance of her life, though no obvious source or medical cause can be found. When she discovers that a student of hers can also hear the hum, the two strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of neighbours who also perceive the sound. What starts as a neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something far more extreme and with far-reaching, devastating consequences. The Listeners is an exhilarating and erotic novel exploring the seduction of the wild and unknowable, the human search for the transcendent, the rise of conspiracy culture in the West, and the desire for community and connection in our increasingly polarised times.

Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian living in London and is already an internationally acclaimed playwright. Two of his plays have won a Governor General's Literary Award, Canada's highest state honour for literature. He has written one previous novel, LIMINAL which was published in Canada by House of Anansi and was named one of the best Canadian novels of 2018 by CBC Books. Inspired by real-life occurrences and by his own upbringing in a Nichiren Buddhist household THE LISTENERS will be Tannahill's debut novel in the UK and America.

Praise for The Listeners: 'Fantastic on conspiracy theories, cults, faith and mania and stuffed full of engaging characters' Daily Mail 'The Listeners starts as a little hum in your ear and ends up blowing the top off your head. A deeply plausible, funny, horrifying story of a journey right off the rails' Emma Donoghue, author of The Pull of the Stars 'I loved this book. Tannahill is such a skilled prose stylist that this book manages to be both a page-turning unravelling of a family and a manic, fully-alive monologue of a woman going over the edge' Zoe Whittall, author of The Spectacular 'One of those rare novels that entered my soul, rearranged my brain cells and then my world view. Tannahill writes with the heat and wisdom of a God' Claudia Dey, author of Heartbreaker and Stunt 'Breathtakingly timely. It's an enigmatic story of 21st-century melancholia motored by sentences at once propulsive and erudite (that beautiful synthesis). Everyone's going to be talking about this book' Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A History of My Brief Body 'Tannahill has written an engaging, shocking and hilarious story about how a woman's search for deeper meaning leads to an entire town being in crisis. It is a testament to the revulsion and horror an ordinary person can inspire when they decide to simply peek outside of the box' Heather O'Neill, author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel 'A breathtakingly, breathholdingly good novel from one of the most original writers in this country. Tannahill serves up enormous ideas in delicious slices. What's truth? Who do we trust? Is skepticism better than belief? He has a playwright's ear and a director's eye. I didn't so much read the novel as watch it unfold' Ian Williams, author of Reproduction