Synopses & Reviews
Poetic and haunting, Listen is an artfully rendered memoir that recounts the authors relationship with her brilliant and abusive father. Listen is a memoir of voices, the voices of parents that linger in the ears of children until the day when those children are able to sound their own note. A domineering father and a professor of languages and literature in the 1950s and 60s, Victor has four women trapped in his orbithis long-suffering wife and his three well-behaved daughters. Teacher, poet, translator” is how he wants his gravestone to read, and in life he is dedicated to passing on to his family the great cultural achievements of western civilizationpoetry, philosophy, religion, music, art. But he leaves darker gifts as well, in particular to his daughter Wendy the most traumatic legacy of all: incest.
A major achievement and a stunning debut, Listen is about how families shape their memories and how even things that are never spoken about have potent echoes. Its also a memoir that chronicles a poets apprenticeship to words, the story of a daughter who listened and who, with the gift for poetry her father gave her, learned to translate the darkest secrets of their past.
Wendy Salinger is the author of Folly River, which won the National Poetry Series, and a graduate of Duke and the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She directs The Schools Project at the 92nd St. Y's Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City. Listen is a memoir of voices, the voices of parents that linger in the ears of children until the day when the children can tell their own story. A domineering father and a professor of languages and literature in the 1950s and '60s, Victor has four women trapped in his orbithis long-suffering wife and his three well-behaved daughters. "Teacher, poet, translator" is how he wants his gravestone to read, and in life he is dedicated to passing on to his family the great cultural achievements of western civilizationpoetry, philosophy, religion, music, art. But he leaves darker gifts as well; in particular to his daughter Wendy, the most traumatic legacy of all: incest.
Listen is about how families shape their memories and how even things that are never spoken about have potent echoes. It's also a memoir that chronicles a poet's apprenticeship to words, the story of a daughter who listened and who, with the gift for poetry her father gave her, learned to translate the darkest secrets of their past. "Wendy Salinger's Listen reminded me of The Hours by Michael Cunningham. The writing is perfectly beautiful: strip-mined jewels of language. Knowing her people is cumulative and extraordinary. I wept and I loved. Listen is a great book of great distinction."Pat Conroy "An absolutely beautiful, important, and stunning piece of work. It will mean so much to so many people, not just because of its story, but because of the incredible texture of the language. So few books come out that are as aware as this one that words are the medium that we're breathing when we read."Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli "Set to the rhythm of dreams, Wendy Salinger's Listen is an intensely lyrical, often shocking song of heartache laced with irony and witthe poet's look at the poet's soul. An astounding accomplishment."Josephine Humphreys, author of Nowhere Else on Earth and Rich in Love "With subtle ferocity and haunting originality of prose, Wendy Salinger proves to be Sylvia Plath's true heir, and Listen a mighty sequel to The Bell Jar."Roya Hakakian, author of Journey from the Land of No "Anger and invective make dramatic reading, and poet Salinger's haunting memoir captures vividly the way her father's accusing, complaining, raging tirades against his wife filled their family life in the 1950s and '60s: at the dinner table ('we were so full of your voice we could barely swallow'); in the car ('Choke and throttle. Fumes, fuming'). But slowly the daughter reveals secrets she can still barely confront: her domineering father, eminent professor and poet, sexually abused her . . . [T]he spare narrative is a stirring coming-of-age story, occasionally in verse, mostly in lyrical prose, with no closure. The biggest surprise is the submissive mother's story, revealed when he is in the hospital and there is space. It turns out that she is far more sophisticated than her familyand the readerrealized. But why did she do nothing? She knew. Her denial'once you say something out loud, you can't put it back'is the unforgettable climax."Booklist "Salinger, in this memoir of her father (whom she refers to as Victor), leaves a full portrait of the man in the shadows from which she gleans a two-part personal and family history ('Life Before Death'; 'Life After Death'). With creative control and telling imagery, poet Salinger renders the everyday absorbing. Shifting voice, recreated internal and external dialogue, suggestion, nuance and detail draw readers voyeuristically into the marriages, births, school days, hospital stays, aging, ailments and deaths of Salinger's family headed by an abusive, self-centered, self-indulgent artist father."Publishers Weekly
Review
"Sylvia Plath comes, inevitably, to mind. [Salinger writes] in a voice that is cool and luminous as moonlight." Boston Globe
Review
"[Salinger is] a visionary.her poems hum with significance and glint with wonder."(David Young, Washington Post Book World, Jun 4 2006 )
Review
"Sylvia Plath comes, inevitably, to mind. [Salinger writes] in a voice that is cool and luminous as moonlight."
Review
"Salinger's memoir...uses language not as a tool of gaudy confession but as a medium of scalding moral reckoning." Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
"Wendy Salinger's
Listen reminded me of
The Hours by Michael Cunningham. The writing is perfectly beautiful: strip-mined jewels of language. Knowing her people is cumulative and extraordinary. I wept and I loved.
Listen is a great book of great distinction."--
Pat Conroy "Wendy Salinger, a National Poetry Series winner, is an ornate stylist, but
she also recognizes that words make up only part of any text. Here, she
navigates the negative spaces between words and charts the distances between what is
said and what we actually hear....[LISTEN] reclaims for Salinger the power
and authority her father denied her."--Andrew Ervin, The Washington Post Book
World
"LISTEN is as much about itself as it is about the author's life. That is,
it's about language...overflowing with the clamoring, insistent, pungent,
sometimes spare but often lushly poetic words of this arresting book....The
household she describes is the most hair-raisingly dysfunctional family since the
Oedipuses."--Richard Horwich, The East Hampton Star
Synopsis
Poetic and haunting, Listen is an artfully rendered memoir that recounts the author's relationship with her brilliant and abusive father. Listen is a memoir of voices, the voices of parents that linger in the ears of children until the day when those children are able to sound their own note. A domineering father and a professor of languages and literature in the 1950s and '60s, Victor has four women trapped in his orbit--his long-suffering wife and his three well-behaved daughters. "Teacher, poet, translator" is how he wants his gravestone to read, and in life he is dedicated to passing on to his family the great cultural achievements of western civilization--poetry, philosophy, religion, music, art. But he leaves darker gifts as well, in particular to his daughter Wendy the most traumatic legacy of all: incest.
A major achievement and a stunning debut, Listen is about how families shape their memories and how even things that are never spoken about have potent echoes. It's also a memoir that chronicles a poet's apprenticeship to words, the story of a daughter who listened and who, with the gift for poetry her father gave her, learned to translate the darkest secrets of their past.
About the Author
Wendy Salinger is the author of
Folly River, winner of The National Poetry Series, and a graduate of Duke and the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in the
New Yorker,
The Kenyon Review,
The Paris Review, and
Ploughshares. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a fellow at The MacDowell Colony. She directs the Schools Project at the 92nd St. Y's Unterberg Poetry Center in New York.