The Listeners

The Listeners is an electrifying novel that treads the threshold of faith, conspiracy, and mania.

Do you hear that?

Hear what? 

It’s like a— humming, I said. Paul looked up, and we both listened for a moment.

A humming? 

Like a very low hum, I said. He frowned, shrugged and returned to his tablet. 

I don’t hear it.

 

If you stop; sit very still and listen, what do you hear? Imagine that you hear a low hum. Now imagine that hum begins to smother all other sound, that it becomes so all consuming it starts to give you nosebleeds, anxiety, insomnia… Now imagine that no-one else can hear it. 

 

While lying in bed next to her husband, Claire Devon suddenly hears a low hum that he cannot, nor it seems, can anyone else. This innocuous noise begins to upset the balance of Claire’s 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 kind of neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something far more extreme and with far-reaching, devastating consequences. 

 

The Listeners is an electrifying novel that treads the threshold of faith, conspiracy, and mania. Compelling, exhilarating and erotic it forces us to consider the effects of polarisation when it occurs within a family unit. When does a theory, unmoored from fact, become faith? And when do a group of people, galvanised by that theory, become a cult?