Listen - A Novel

In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris-even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art programme in the Netherlands. The city, the language, the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she''d been reckoning with in school. Even as her experiences with the family in Paris begin to echo the troubles left in the Netherlands, Marie pushes on. Years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognise her former teacher, and the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured in aftermath of the attacks, in the exact arrondissement where her previous employers live. The past she believed she''s untethered from turns out to be be a knot still capable of constricting tightly around her. Can she face Paris-and what she ran away from to get to Paris-and finally disentangle herself from her past?