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The Listeners
- Narrated by: Deborah Pearson
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
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Summary
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.
Critic reviews
‘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
What listeners say about The Listeners
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Lucy
- 27-05-23
Complex,compound, makes you question yourself & the perception of others
This on the face of it, is a novel that might appear to be quite simple with immediate themes and contemporary concerns in a modern digital age. Where the complexities of interactions with older teenagers soon to be adults, things that still make us and the wise society uncomfortable is all this novel is about. Encased in a somewhat sensationalised wrapping. But it falls far deeper than that like the unseen protagonist (no spoiler alerts) in this work. It made the think and question many things that I think most people take for granted. I personally love works that challenge me to question to interrogate my own understanding of things. And this novel certainly does that. Place Claire as the writer, looking back on a series of life defining events makes the novel sit up you pay attention - there is after all nothing more intriguing than a first hand account of controversial events. Which brings to the novel a very present,very now vibe, of how “news” and “the media” can escalate and deescalate situations. How quickly heroes and saviours can be made into devils and demons . How the pull for normalcy - perceived normalcy and the lack of it if you’re outside those remits can isolate a person. I’d thoroughly recommend The Listeners.
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- Amazon Customer
- 18-04-24
Not dystopian
This book is strange. I love the way it’s written like a retrospective, the narrator does a great job you can hear the heartbreak in her voice at the end. The story kind of goes in a full circle it’s cultish and the hostage situation at the end is a great end. But yes this is a strange little book
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- Nicky
- 11-09-21
I loved this book
Such a beautiful and layered story, insights into the complexities of human nature, quite dark in places (in a psychological sense).. the voice actor was great
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- bradley
- 14-07-21
Tries Too Hard
Okay, so I'm a pretty open minded individual, so finding a book by chance that has a female main character and a female narrator was a rather refreshing experience. However, this experience was soon deflated due to the fact that the book tries way too hard to insert political correctness into almost every single aspect of the first seven chapters.
I won't go into detail about specific contradictions that I picked up on because it is possible to misinterpret at times, and i also don't want to be subjected to ridicule for my own personal opinions. However, this did in fact ruin any potential satisfaction I may have taken from the novel, to the point where I reluctantly just couldn't finish it.
If political correctness is what you seek then look no further than this book because it has an abundance, but if you're like me you're looking for nothing more than just easy listening. The excessive use of this theme seems to only demonstrate a lack of faith in what seemed like a genuinely authentic and exciting idea.
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