A modern gothic about a marriage and road trip gone hauntingly awry
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 one another. 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 they are forced to stop for the night at a remote inn, completely without power, Maggie's paranoia reaches an all-time and terrifying high. But when Mark finds himself threatened in a dark parking lot, it’s Maggie who takes control.
Praise for Listen to Me
Hannah Pittard s got the goods. There s no doubt about it. Listen to Me has a way of making you uneasy from the get-go. Maybe it s the approaching storm, the dark night, all the terrible things that might be hiding around the corner. Or maybe it s just how much the main characters, with all of their faults and scars and frustrated desires, remind us of ourselves. Regardless, this is 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
Listen to Me is the sort of novel you want to read in one sitting: suspenseful, unsettling, and beautifully written. Hannah Pittard goes into one couple s dark night of the soul with surprising charm and wit, but also with a fierce and intelligent honesty. Dean Bakopoulos, author of Summerlong
Hannah Pittard s Listen to Me is a dazzling new novel with a perfectly drawn forty-something couple on a positively Hitchcockian misadventure. As the suspense grows, their world turns darker and more menacing, threatened by violent weather and bizarre people, like the cowboy who, out of nowhere, remarks on Maggie s appearance or does he? By then you know you re in for the duration, a ride into the heart of darkness, West Virginia style, where, after a night in hell and a heartbreakingly high price, they find what they re looking for a way out, a second chance.
Frederick Barthelme, author of There Must Be Some Mistake and Waveland
An unflinching look at the tightrope walk of marriage, Hannah Pittard s Listen to Me holds a mirror up to our own twisted and hopeful idiosyncrasies. Pittard is an expert guide to the dark places of the soul, revealing how the smallest shift of balance in our fragile psyches can set off a chain of mini detonations. But like the rain that accompanies this journey across America s heartland, Pittard s close empathy is a clarifying wash. This is the best kind of road trip novel: one where the tension drowns out the radio.
Katy Simpson Smith, author of The Story of Land and Sea
Hannah Pittard s Listen to Me is a strange and wonderful book about the mysteries of coupledom and the long surreal highways of America. It s written in a lean and elegant prose and I read these pages in one long and enthralled sitting.
Darcey Steinke, author of Suicide Blonde and Sister Golden Hair
