Sometimes gory and thoroughly stunning, Leni Zumas's debut novel,The Listeners, is a book concerned with the fraught relationship between psyche and flesh.
Once a rising punk rock star with the promise of a major record deal, Quinn is in her mid-30s, broke and languishing in obscurity. Her life is defined by two tragedies: the roadside disaster that destroyed her deepest friendship and her career, and the violent death of her younger sister 20 years before. Bodily intact but profoundly traumatized, she can no longer listen to music, and she marks her days with shifts at a failing bookstore, smoke breaks and obligatory dinners with her parents and brother. Quinn, who discovered her sister's body while their mother's pancakes smoldered on the stove, sees blood in every meal.
Like her lost sister, Quinn also has synesthesia--food and music not only mark her various traumas but send her into intense sensory overload. This is torture for Quinn, but gives Zumas the opportunity for wildly inventive descriptions. "My melodies were blue or silver or bruise," she remembers of her color-directed performances. "Like runny fabric they bled behind my eyes." Others are more subtle, as when Quinn poignantly remembers her sister's aptitude for smelling "on a book the reaction of the last person to read it."
The energy of these phrases lend a vital spark to the story as Quinn weaves dizzily between past and present. There's a twisted sort of hope in there, too, among the pain and loss. But should you pick up The Listeners (and you should!), expect both a wrenched gut and a rent heart. --Hannah Calkins, blogger at Unpunished Vice