The Listeners: Jordan Tannahill

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The Listeners is on the shortlist for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The winner will be announced on Nov. 8, 2021. In the novel The Listeners, Claire Devon is one of a disparate group of people who can hear a low hum. No one in her house can hear it, and this sound has no obvious source or medical cause, but it starts upsetting the balance of Claire's life. She strikes up a friendship with one of her students who can also hear the hum. Feeling more and more isolated from their families and colleagues, they join a neighbourhood self-help group of people who can also hear the hum, which gradually transforms into something much more extreme, with far-reaching and devastating consequences. Numerous reports of the Hum have been made across the UK, usually clustered around specific towns or cities: Hythe, Plymouth and, as recently as last month, Swansea. Studies are sometimes conducted, and theories proposed, but without conclusive findings. In the case of Hythe, the Scottish Association for Marine Science hypothesised that the noise might be caused by the mating call of male midshipman fish, which emit ever-louder drones, sometimes for hours, in an escalating competition to attract potential mates. Tannahill's plays frequently explore the nature of belief, queer identity, power relations, and the body as a political subject. [15] His work has been performed across North America and Europe, particularly in Germany, where several of his plays are in state theater repertory. [16] [17]

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. Paul turned his head on the pillow, and said, You know, I wasn't totally comfortable with you calling us atheists. Jordan Tannahill’s Theatre of the Unimpressed is essential reading for anybody interested in contemporary theatre". The Globe and Mail, June 12, 2015. I remain filled to the brim with questions yet, I care not for answers. Claire sees her life return to normal without much consequence. People died but she simply walks home to the husband she treats like rotting trash so that he can tend to her as he has always done. The majority of the characters in this book are spoiled beyond repair & this renders the book banal. Claire’s experience being the outlier in her home where she treats the other two (2) people living there like accessories to her rise to fame, is ridiculous. Tannahill has been described as "the enfant terrible of Canadian Theatre" by Libération, "the hottest name in Canadian theatre" by The Montreal Gazette, and "widely celebrated as one of Canada's most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists" by The Toronto Star. In 2019, CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.

It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on violence, psychological distress, the suggestion of sexually performed acts by a minor, intimate relationship between an authority figure & a minor, dated & derogatory terminology, suicidal ideations, self-harm of a minor, & others. On April 4, 2019, Tannahill and three collaborators staged a protest action during high tea at The Dorchester Hotel. [42] The action was in response to Brunei's proposed introduction of laws that make homosexual sex and adultery punishable by stoning to death. [43] The Dorchester Collection is a luxury hotel operator owned by the Brunei Investment Agency. Video documentation of the protest action, and Tannahill's forceful removal from the hotel, went viral soon after it was posted online. [44] Bibliography [ edit ] Fiction [ edit ] 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. Do you think that you understand the whole world? You don't think there's room for things that no one can explain? Is there nothing left to discover? p157 The truth is that I am a mother, and a wife, and a former high school English teacher who now teaches ESL night classes at the library near my house. I love my family fiercely. My daughter, Ashley, is the most important person in my life. You read about parents disowning their transgender sons, or refusing to speak to their daughters for marrying a Jew, or not marrying a Jew, and I think — well that's just barbarism. Faith is basically a mental illness if it makes you do something so divorced from your natural instincts as a parent. I remember holding Ashley when she was about 45 seconds old, before she had even opened her eyes, when she was just this slimy little mole-thing, nearly a month premature, and I remember thinking I would literally commit murder for this creature. As I held her I imagined all of the joy and pleasure she would feel, all of the pain that I would not and could not protect her from, and it completely overwhelmed me. I imagined the men who would hurt her one day, and I imagined castrating them one by one with my bare hands. All of this before she was a minute old! So no, I have never understood how anyone could ever put any creed or ideology before their love of their child — and yet, this is precisely what Ashley accused me of doing in the year lead- ing up to the events on Sequoia Crescent. Faith is basically a mental illness if it makes you do something so divorced from your natural instincts as a parent.

Yet another theory points to the nearly 8m lightning strikes that hit Earth every day. These strikes build up a massive electromagnetic charge which, in turn, causes the air between the surface of the Earth and the ionosphere to resonate – much like the inside of a bottle when one blows across its top. In the same way that burnt toast takes away from the desire & hopes held in the pallet of the consumer so too did this book strip me of the ability to regard it with any level of seriousness. The impossibility that this book was anything other than satire leads me to feel a level of comedic humour otherwise unachievable by a story that is brimmed with sensitive & morose subject matters. The reaction to Claire by her loved ones is similar to people being confronted with anything they don’t understand. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted

Jordan Tannahill

Jordan Tannahill's latest novel The Listeners traces one woman's destructive journey in search for truth As with all the novels on the 2021 Giller Prize shortlist, The Listeners is carefully plotted and expertly written. Tannahill’s prose is consistently sharp and darkly funny, but his story’s inventive premise is what pushes it into the “must-read” category.

In the face of this story, one might ask themselves what the appealing feature of such a dementedly irritating plot might be & I should like to highlight that I came across this book while looking to read stories written by Canadian authors. I have a great appreciation for the bizarre, especially in literature, & therefore felt that this book would be right up my alley. When Claire begins to hear a hum she goes insane, in the literal medical meaning of the word. I was intrigued by the topic & admit to having high hopes for this book. In the time of COVID, this feels particularly prescient and compelling. The Listeners made me think a lot about society and how we interact with one another. About beliefs and their power. About the scope of knowledge, we currently take for granted but continually revise across our lifetimes.How easy it is to fall out of status with society and with the people who should be best equipped to support you and love you unconditionally. If you do not conform to what is described by society as “normal” you do not get to participate in it. Even though, arguably, all our interactions are performance. If you are out of step you learn what it’s like outside of the dance. In 2017, Tannahill's play Late Company transferred to London's West End. [20] [21] [22] In the same year, his virtual reality performance Draw Me Close, co-produced by London's National Theatre and the National Film Board of Canada, premiered at the Venice Biennale. [23] His play for young performers, Is My Microphone On?, commissioned for the 2020 Theater der Welt festival by the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, was produced as part of the 2023 National Theatre Connections festival. [24] [25] After a death hoax in February, playwright, performance artist and journalist Nina Arsenault speaks candidly about art, aging and mortality". Toronto Star, March 18, 2021. They chart the town in search of a sound no one, ostensibly, can hear but them. And this obsession, as it becomes, is a catalyst for Claire’s life to morph into a completely different vessel. The shape of which her friends and her husband and daughter cannot make sense of, and so shun her. In 2012, in collaboration with his then-partner William Ellis, Jordan founded and ran Videofag, an alternative arts space operated out of a defunct barbershop in Toronto's Kensington Market. The space doubled as the couple's home and became an influential hub for counterculture in the city, until its closure in 2016. [38] [39] Political views [ edit ]

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? The Listeners starts as a little hum in your ear and ends up blowing the top off your head. A deeply plausible, funny, horrifying story of a journey right off the rails.”

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She’s a relatable 21st-century everywoman who loves her daughter, fears organized religion, and hates the patriarchy. Her cleverness should have probably taken her further in life, but she’s happy with the way things are until The Hum so rudely invades her life.