Listen To Me

by Hannah Pittard

Overview

A page-turning modern gothic about a marriage and road trip gone hauntingly awry
 
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
 
“Pittard deserves the attention of anyone in search of today’s best fiction.” — Washington Post

“Revelatory.” — The New Yorker
 
“[Listen to Me] gripped me completely and even gave me nightmares, which is high praise in my book.” — Chicago Tribune
 
Mark and Maggie’s annual drive east to visit family has gotten off to a rocky start. By the time they’re on the road, it’s late, a storm is brewing, and they are no longer speaking to each other. Adding to the stress, Maggie—recently mugged at gunpoint—is lately not herself, and Mark is at a loss about what to make of the stranger he calls his wife. When the couple is forced to stop for the night at a remote inn completely without power, Maggie’s paranoia reaches an all-time and terrifying high. But as Mark finds himself threatened in a dark parking lot, it’s Maggie who takes control. 

“Pittard proves herself a master of ordinary suspense.” — New York Times

“Listen to Me elides so many genres that it’s Houdini-like, bursting through constraints. It moves between its two characters’ inner lives as effortlessly as an Olympic swimmer strokes through water.” — Ann Beattie, Paris Review blog
 
“A psychologically complex, addictive, and quick-moving read. I didn’t want it to end!” — M.O. Walsh, author of New York Times best-selling novel My Sunshine Away
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544715233
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/05/2016
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	869,884
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

HANNAH PITTARD was born in Atlanta. She is the author of four novels, including Listen to Me and The Fates Will Find Their Way. Her work has appeared in the Sewanee Review, the New York Times, and other publications. She is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing.

Read an Excerpt

Listen to me and I will speak: but first swear, by word
and hand, that you will keep me safe with all your heart.
—Homer, The Iliad


auto |
         informal
         n. a motor car.
ORIGIN late 19th cent.: abbreviation of AUTOMOBILE.

auto- |
         comb. form
         self: autoanalysis
one’s own: autobiography
by one’s self: automatic
by itself: automaton
ORIGIN from Greek: autos ‘self.’



1


They were on the road later than they intended. They’d wanted to make Indianapolis by noon, but they overslept. Mark offered to walk the dog while Maggie packed up the car. He’d wanted her to pack up the car the night before, but Maggie said it was nuts to leave a car full of luggage on a side street in Chicago.
     “Every time,” she’d said. “We go through this every time.”
     “You worry too much,” he said.
     “Maybe you don’t worry enough.”
     It was dark by the time they’d had this argument and late, which meant Maggie had already won.
     And so, in the morning, it was Mark — as promised — who took the dog out so that Maggie could arrange the car. But downstairs, in the private entrance to their apartment — private entrance! It had taken forever, but three years ago they’d finally found the perfect apartment with its own perfectly private entrance, which they didn’t have to share with a single other person, a fact that, to this day, continued to bring Maggie sharp, if fleeting, pleasure — was the week’s recycling, just sitting there at the bottom of the stairs. Mark swore he’d taken it out.
     Clearly, he hadn’t.
     She put down the luggage and was about to pick up the bin to do the job herself when she saw it: a pink-gold length of foil peeking up from beneath a newspaper. She pushed the paper aside.
     Her heart sank — exactly what she thought: the foil was attached to an empty bottle of champagne. Her bottle of champagne. Hers and Mark’s, from their last anniversary. She’d been saving it. For what, she didn’t know. But she’d liked looking at it every now and then where she’d stashed it above the refrigerator next to the cookbooks. True, it had been a while since she’d taken any real note of the thing. Even so. It made her sad to think he’d thrown it out without ceremony, which was an overly sentimental concern — did an empty bottle truly merit ceremony? — but what was she going to do? Suddenly become a different person?
     According to the Enneagram, which she’d taken on the recommendation of her therapist — former therapist, Maggie had stopped seeing her three weeks ago — everyone emerged from childhood with a basic personality type. Maggie’s was Loyalist. Think: committed, hard-working, reliable. Also according to the Enneagram (she’d done some recent reading on her own), people didn’t change from their basic type. Instead, throughout their lives, they vacillate between nine different levels within their type, the healthiest being a One.
     Lately, Maggie was about an Eight. Think: paranoia, hysteria, irrational behavior. Her goal, by the end of the summer, was to be back at her usual Three or Four. There wasn’t an overnight solution.
     She picked up the bottle. Even empty, its weight was significant. Mark had splurged because they could. Because life was good and on what else were they going to spend their money? “There are no luggage racks on hearses,” they sometimes said to one another. “Spend it if you’ve got it.” Mostly they were joking — they never spent beyond their means. But it was only just the two of them. They had no children’s educations to consider, and so why not enjoy an extravagance every once in a while?
     She tore off a sliver of the pink foil — the tiniest of keepsakes! — then slipped it into her back pocket. Perhaps Mark was testing her, measuring her steadiness by relieving her of an ultimately trivial trinket. Yet he’d been so patient these last nine months, so generous with his affection — kissing her shoulder before clearing the table, squeezing her hand before falling asleep. Sure, they’d quarreled about the luggage and maybe the last three weeks had been more strained than usual, but quarrels, as Maggie and her former therapist had discussed, were the latticework of relationships. They were the branches — interlacing the pattern, strengthening the structure — that sheltered them and kept them together.
     She put the bottle back in the bin, right at the very top. She didn’t need to say a thing about it. She would pass his test with flying colors.
     Mark and Gerome were crossing the street when she emerged from the front door.
     “What are you doing?” said Mark.
     “The recycling,” she said. She held up the bin. “You didn’t take it out.”
     She watched his eyes; they didn’t acknowledge the bottle.
     “Gerome didn’t do anything,” Mark said.
     Maggie looked down at Gerome, who was looking up at her and wagging his tail. He sneezed.
     “What do you mean?” she said.
     “He didn’t go.”
     “He always goes.”
     Gerome was still wagging his tail.
     “You’re driving him crazy with the recycling.” Mark held out his hands to take it.
     “You don’t do it right,” she said.
     “If I chuck it all at once or put it in piece by piece doesn’t matter. It all goes to the same place, whether it’s broken or not.”
     Maggie shrugged. He was right. She knew he was right. She wasn’t an idiot, but there was something so gloomy about Mark carelessly hurling it all away. Just as there was something equally gloomy about watching the homeless man who walked their alley take off his gloves one finger at a time before searching the recycling for refundable bottles. It was silly to think their bottles and cans contributed anything significant to the man’s well-being, but she couldn’t help it. The thought of him fingering broken bits of glass made her heart ache. Of course, she hadn’t actually seen anyone going through the trash since autumn, as she hadn’t taken out the recycling since her mugging, and yet here she was still thinking about it, and here it was filling her afresh with sadness, a condition both new and not new.
     For nine months, the sadness had been a constant — a heavy, dull fog lingering greedily about the nape of her neck. She was aware of it in the morning when she woke, in the afternoon when she worked, in the evening when she scoured the Internet, seeking out the most miserable stories of human woe.
     When Mark came home from teaching, he’d sometimes find her in front of the computer. He would ask, “What are you doing?” And she’d say, “Reading the Internet. Reading about this girl who just died. Reading about this boy who was killed. Reading about this teenager who kidnapped a jogger and took her body apart limb by limb.” He had been so devoted the first few months after the incident in the alley, when the sadness was pushing down around her. He would close the computer, take her hand, lead her to the living room, and read aloud to her. He had a magnificent reading voice. Sometimes he chose a bit of poetry. Sometimes history or philosophy. They both liked Augustine and stories of war. Yeats was also a favorite. Mark would occasionally ask about her therapy. The sadness had begun to lift. The appointments had been helping. She stopped seeking out those awful news articles and started reading about other Loyalists online, about their own struggles with fear and personal insecurity. Maggie had felt herself returning. She’d felt the fog lightening, her levels stabilizing. Things with Mark were as good as ever.
     But then, just three weeks ago — out of nowhere and with no warning whatsoever — the police appeared. They showed up at the front door of the apartment with pictures of a body, a coed who lived just down the street. They presented them to Maggie. Why had they let her see them? She hadn’t understood then and still didn’t now. They also presented photos of a man, the one responsible for the coed. Was it the same man? they wanted to know. Was it the man who’d struck Maggie with the butt of a gun and left her for dead not two blocks from where she lived?

Editorial Reviews

A New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice

"An Entertainment Weekly “Seriously Scary Summer Read” A Washington Post “Best Summer Thriller” A The Millions "Most Anticipated" Book A Lit Hub "Buzz Book" A Refinery29 "Best Book of 2016 So Far" A New Yorker “Book We Loved 2016” "We continue to love thrillers and especially love this one. In Pittard’s unconventional novel, a couple on a road trip deal with raging storms and their own fraying marriage." —The New York Times Book Review “Hannah Pittard’s 'Listen to Me' is a quiet, revelatory novel that exposes the inner workings of a marriage along a harrowing road trip.”—The New Yorker "Hannah Pittard's captivating third novel, Listen to Me, focuses on a smart, attractive couple who have reached that point, not unknown in marriage, when partners fear that the person they love is driving them crazy. Pittard, having introduced these troubled lovers, sends them on a journey across America that soon places their lives in peril. You won't put this story down...Pittard is operating at a level few writers attain. [She] deserves the attention of anyone in search of today's best fiction." —The Washington Post "[Listen to Me] gripped me completely and even gave me nightmares, which is high praise in my book."—The Chicago Tribune "The book is an examination of trauma, perseverance, and trust in both yourself and the people you love; to read it is to be at once engrossed and unsettled.” —Buzzfeed “Thrilling and suspenseful, Listen to Me digs into the ways in which the person you trust the most can fast become a stranger—forcing you to question whether you knew them at all to begin with.” —Refinery29 "You won’t be able to put down this thrilling, quick read." —Real Simple “Mark and Maggie's relationship is as strained as can be, fraught after Maggie's world was shattered by a mugging at gunpoint. But when the couple goes on their annual trip, Maggie's newfound paranoia may be the thing that saves them from certain danger. Pittard writes with a unique gusto, and you'll be riveted the entire way through.” —Bustle "Winner of the Amanda Davis Award from McSweeney’s and author of the novels Reunion and The Fates Will Find Their Way, Pittard now brings us the story of a young married couple, Mark and Maggie, on a road trip gone wrong. Maggie’s recently been robbed at gun point, and by the time they stop for the night at an out-of-the-way inn (without power), the two aren’t even speaking to one another. Frederick Barthelme calls it 'a positively Hitchcockian misadventure.’" —The Millions "Listen to Me elides so many genres that it’s Houdini-like, bursting through constraints. It moves between its two characters’ inner lives as effortlessly as an Olympic swimmer strokes through water.”—Ann Beattie, The Paris Reviewblog “Listen To Me reminds us that even good marriages are hard work. And that the world can be a scary p —

From the Publisher