Jordan Tannahill's latest novel The Listeners traces one woman's destructive journey in search for truth
CBC Books | | Posted: September 28, 2021 2:15 PM | Last Updated: October 5, 2021
The Listeners is on the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist
Jordan Tannahill is a playwright, director and author. He has twice won the Governor General's Literary Award for drama: in 2014 for the play Age of Minority and in 2018 for the plays Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom. His debut novel Liminal won France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires.
Tannahill's second novel, The Listeners, follows a suburban mother and teacher named Claire Devon. Set up as a memoir, Claire recounts how she becomes part of a disparate group of people who can hear a low hum that has no obvious source or medical cause. Feeling more and more isolated from her family, Claire strikes up a friendship with one of her students who can also hear the hum and her life soon begins to unravel.
The Listeners is on the shortlist for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The winner will be announced on Nov. 8, 2021.
Tannahill spoke to CBC Books about writing the novel.
When did the first idea of the book appear to you?
It really began with me initially reading about the hum in Windsor and then kind of beginning to extrapolate from there. I imagined a character of a mother and a wife named Claire Devon, who's a teacher and who begins to hear the hum and her family can't hear this hum. Her colleagues at work can't. Her friends can't. How incredibly isolating this is for her.
And I began thinking very much of this idea of the hysterical subject, this very gendered figure throughout history. A woman's symptoms and ailments have often been disregarded and dismissed as psychosomatic or hysterical or what have you.
I began thinking very much of this idea of the hysterical subject, this very gendered figure throughout history. - Jordan Tannahill
I think the idea of this person reminded me a little bit of Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes's Safe, who has this inexplicable illness or ailment which burdens her incredibly, but who, despite the good intentions of her family, is not believed.
I think that was the departure point for this story and how that ostracizes her from her life and drives her into a more extreme trajectory where she's seeking the comfort and companionship of initially a student of hers, who can also hear the hum, and then ultimately strangers. So that's where, for me, it began.
What drew you to the hum?
This phenomenon of the hum was something that had been widely reported for several decades, at least since the early 1970s. And it was something that there was a lot of lingering mystery about, which intrigued me. The natural explanations for what this could be were sublime and interesting.
There was a team of French scientists who believed that possibly the hum was being created by ocean waves rolling against the ocean floor or concussing against the continental shelf and causing vibrations. There were theories about the possibility that it was the windstream shearing against a low pressure system that caused the sound, or possibly it was human made — a technological sort of noise pollution, like the sound of the electric grid or radio waves or submarine pings that were causing these sounds.
I found that to be all really creatively enticing, this element of mystery. And of course, what further intrigued me was the fact these theories could also spiral towards the conspiritorial or even the supernatural. I've been interested generally in conspiratorial thinking and elements of truth in the political moment that we live in.
Why did you want to explore the idea of how people respond when their ideas of themselves, their personal narratives are suddenly falling apart?
I think in a lot of my work a certain kind of normative, I guess status quo, is somehow disrupted by the arrival of a dark force. In the case of my play, Concord Floral, this mysterious plague arrives. And in this case, there's the hum — a force that arrives and disrupts the order of Claire's life. But to a degree, she also invites it in. She invites a sense of wildness into her life or the unknown into her life and I'm actually interested in that impulse.
Whether it's a toxic relationship that we know we shouldn't be in or an addiction or a toxic group of friends, we sometimes continue to invite this into our lives because it gives us pleasure and gives our lives meaning and a sense of texture and purpose, the things that ultimately also destroy us or threaten to disrupt the everyday. I'm interested in disrupting the order and the characters who invite that into their lives, either wittingly or unwittingly.
Is there a reason why you feel drawn to that type of character?
I mean, to me, there's something kind of queer about that, I suppose. This libidinal, anarchic energy that the hum begins to represent in Claire's life and the lives of these people who hear it. And by inviting it into her life, it disrupts and rearranges everything. It's definitely an impulse I can relate to.
What were some of the biggest challenges while writing this?
Bringing Claire to life, I suppose, was the biggest challenge and not just tell a downward spiral story. Certainly not one where we're watching from the outside and judging Claire. I like to craft a journey in which we are, more or less, ideally in lock step with her and every decision she makes along the way, such that we establish her as a reasonable character who we might associate with or we might have a lot in common with. Then we see her make a series of decisions that seem justifiable or even defensible in the moment that lead to these devastating consequences.
I really wanted us to feel Claire's palpable need to answer this question in her life when nothing else seems to be answering it. - Jordan Tannahill
To make what seems like, from the outside, really conspiratorial thinking, feel reasonable or even logical or even inevitable, as opposed to us standing on the sidelines with our arms crossed, watching this from a distance, for me, that journey was probably the hardest to get right. But also, I knew that if we could, that would make the book.
Having the reader be able to sympathize or empathize with Claire's situation sounds like a challenge. Why do you think that was important to do?
I didn't want the reader to be able to easily dismiss Claire. I didn't want them to be able to dismiss the gravity of hearing the sound and how much that could unravel someone. I also didn't want them to dismiss the plausibility of conspiracy theories.
The fact that we do have a society in which roughly one half of the population seem to be living in one reality and the other half population seems to be living in another totally alternative reality, I think that seems to be one of the great problems of our current political moment. So how do we create a bridge of logic and empathy between that chasm, where we're not just on one side of that and Claire is on the other?
Rather, we journey with her over the bridge to the other side. And if we don't, then we don't actually change and we don't actually question our own positionality. We don't really get to feel the seductions of what it is like to be part of a group who believes they have the only answer. I really wanted us to feel Claire's palpable need to answer this question in her life when nothing else seems to be answering it and to be heard when no one else seems to be listening to her.
Why was it important for you to tell this story right now?
I hope the story is both timely and timeless. I suppose we all hope that as writers, that what we're doing works on those two registers.
I hope the story is both timely and timeless. I suppose we all hope that as writers, that what we're doing works on those two registers. - Jordan Tannahill
I hope that it is timeless is in the ways in which it meditates on faith and questions of truth, perhaps even mania. I think it feels timely in the very specific ways conspiracy theories are being mainstreamed in North American politics, specifically in American politics.
The intersection of conspiracy culture, faith and mania in America has been animating so much of our public life in the last few years and has led to this extremely paranoid state of mind that I feel like a lot of us are only just recovering from and we're very much still living through.
The book is an attempt to make sense of that, make sense of the role of truth and facts in this state of affairs. I think my hope in writing it now was for me to personally make sense of the times we're living through, but also to work out these more timeless questions of faith, truth and spirituality.
Jordan Tannahill's comments have been edited for length and clarity.