Listen

A Novel

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2025

A twisty, slow-burn mystery set in Paris and the Netherlands that has become a Dutch sensation

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 program 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.

But years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognize her former teacher, the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured in aftermath, in the exact arrondissement where her previous employers live. The past she was sure she could leave behind comes flooding back, as do the questions she thought she could live with leaving unanswered.

Told in alternating voices, this “highly ingenious” (NRC) coming-of-age story asks important and haunting questions about the thin line between remembering and recording, seeing and being seen, coincidence and fate, revenge and reclamation—and what it means to walk this boundary.

Slow-moving plot, moderately interesting

The characters were not at all compelling or sympathetic. The plot was puzzling without being intriguing.

I must have been missing something

Am sure this is good literature, and I didn’t care that it was dark. Just didn’t find it very interesting or get what the point was.