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A Novel
by Sacha Bronwasser
Book Reviewed by:A twisty, slow-burn mystery set in Paris and the Netherlands that has become a Dutch sensation.
In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris—even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art program in the Netherlands. The city, the language, the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she'd been reckoning with in school. Even as her experiences with the family in Paris begin to echo the troubles left in the Netherlands, Marie pushes on.
Years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognize her former teacher, and the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured in aftermath of the attacks, in the exact arrondissement where her previous employers live. The past she believed she's untethered from turns out to be be a knot still capable of constricting tightly around her. Can she face Paris—and what she ran away from to get to Paris—and finally disentangle herself from her past?
Readers expecting Listen to resolve itself into a cohesive whole may find themselves disappointed. Bronwasser doesn't limit herself in this slim novel—she writes skilfully and intelligently about photography and perception, about abuse of power in all its forms, and about the joys and anxieties of young adulthood—but her attempts to gather those disparate strands together are never entirely successful. At times, Listen feels more like a short story collection than a novel. But it's not surprising that it made such a splash in Bronwasser's home country, running to twelve reprints since its original publication in 2023. Even if it stumbles down the occasional cul-de-sac, Marie's twisting tale never quite leads you where you expect—and intrigue is sure to keep the reader following relentlessly at her heels...continued
Full Review
(759 words)
(Reviewed by Alex Russell).
Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, author of Grand Hotel Europa
Once you understand the full, wry relevance of the title on the very last pages, only then do you fully realise how masterfully constructed this compelling book is. The skilfully written, suspenseful story turns out to be an intelligent and ambiguous reflection on remembering and recording, on seeing and being seen, on coincidence and makeability, and on the ethics of art and of the appropriation of other people's stories. The question that continues to haunt you at the end is to what extent the novel is an act of revenge and, as such, an example of the unethical appropriation it denounces. Good, clever, deep. Without question premier league, this novel.In Sacha Bronwasser's Listen, Eloïse leaves her home in Germany to spend a year in Paris as an au pair. As she adjusts to her new life, the news is punctuated with stories of bombings targeting civilians across the French capital. Indeed, the events forming the backdrop to Eloïse's year abroad really did take place: throughout 1985 and 1986, Paris was terrorized by a campaign of random attacks more intense than anything it had experienced since the Second World War.
Terrorism was not unknown in Paris during the 1970s and 1980s. Bombs had detonated at the same store on Boulevard Haussmann—not far from the famous Galeries Lafayette—on three separate occasions, in 1976, 1981, and 1985. In March 1985, eighteen ...
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