tamaranth | 2025/197: The Listeners

2025/197: The Listeners — Maggie Stiefvater

Luxury felt like a different game when the people involved were officially enemies of the state. [loc. 1328]

Appalachia, 1942: the luxe Avallon hotel has been designated as an 'assembly point for Axis diplomats and their families' -- an arrangement made by the Gilfoyles. who own the hotel. June Hudson just runs it (and is conducting an ongoing clandestine affair with Gilfoyle heir Edgar: clandestine because she comes from an unsuitable, i.e. poor, background). The luxuries of the hotel, and the benefits of the mysterious 'sweetwaters' that bubble and flow beneath it, are turned to the service of Nazis and fascists, and it's up to June to keep the peace between the various Japanese and German factions, the hotel's staff, and the FBI.

June is one of the titular 'listeners', always aware of her guests' (and the staff's) emotional state, balancing the demands of the waters (which must not turn) with those of the people around her. Other listeners include Edgar Gilfoyle's younger brother Sandy, confined silently in a wheelchair by his war wounds; Hannelore, the adolescent daughter of a German cultural attache; the nameless resident of room 411, who refuses to leave when the other guests are asked to make way for the Axis diplomats. And, of course, Tucker Minnick, the FBI agent who comes from the same places as June, and shares her awareness of the waters -- which are, in a way, also listening, soaking up the emotions of the humans nearby.

It's hard to write about my reaction to this novel because I didn't really engage with it. I love Stiefvater's YA writing -- especially the Raven Cycle (starting with The Raven Boys) -- and had expected something more fantastical from The Listeners. I kept waiting for something ... something more to happen: perhaps it did, but too subtly for my increasing disengagement. As a character study of June Hudson, it's splendid: as a novel, it didn't work for me.