The Listeners, like all best novels, defies easy compartmentalization. In this book, Maggie Stiefvater brings readers to a luxurious hot springs hotel, where, in the midst of World War II, wealthy clients have their every need met. But like the mineral waters, this setting has mysterious depths; it is sometimes benevolent, sometimes vile, sometimes life-giving, sometimes noxious and threatening. While the resort is named the Avallon and presents an almost-Arthurian dreaminess, its geographical location is in West Virginia, home to treacherous coal mines and pervasive poverty. Avallon is seized by the government as a temporary holding pen for captured diplomats from Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
The title of the novel evokes both the passivity and the power of listening rather than speaking. Among the “listeners” in the story is Sandy, a severely wounded soldier who sits so impassively in his wheelchair that he is overlooked like furniture; an unnamed, reclusive woman who resides permanently in Room 411; and Hannelore, a mute German girl whose parents are Nazis, and who makes sounds only by singing numbers, with which she is obsessed. (Specifying how many seconds events take, it is Hannelore who seems to mark the fraught time in this novel like a countdown.) Also listening, at all times, is a vividly drawn protagonist, June Hudson. June is a bold young woman from a poor background who, despite a local accent and the class snobbery that mocks it, has worked her way up to become Avallon’s general manager.
It is June who hears what the waters, themselves also listeners, seem to whisper. She knows when they are benevolent or rank, whether healing or hurting. Periodically, she takes herself to one of the houses on the estate to test these waters. The process is almost supernatural; the springs are like a magic mirror or sorcerer, threatening to absorb June, the hotel, and, perhaps, the entire world. In this way, they parallel the encroaching chaos of the war.
The waters also seem to parallel the romantic choices set before June: either the spoiled scion of the resort or an FBI agent whose identity, like hers, is a blend of volatile elements. This man, Tucker Minnick, is also a listener, and a watcher — he is the worldly counterpart of June, who has long ago decided to make the hotel the only inhabitable place in her life. The Avallon is her domain, its owners her heroes, and staff her only family. As this oasis is increasingly breached by both Axis members and the handsome government agent, the waters rise up and with them, June’s true nature.
When the resident of Room 411 finally speaks, she declares, about money and status: “I’m telling you the Avallon is for anyone who can pay for it. You don’t get any more morally bankrupt than unquestioning luxury.” Her audience is Tucker, who listens to and ultimately questions everything. Following him, June, and the flow of this enigmatic tale, we are led both to contend with and understand the complexities of the human heart.
