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Wall Street Journal
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘The Listeners' Review: Prisoners of Luxury
June Hudson is the preternaturally competent general manager of the Avallon, a posh West Virginia resort and spa whose guests come to take the curative waters—the hotel is built over mineral springs—and to partake of what they see as their due: excellent food and drink, glorious surroundings and white-glove service. 'The Avallon was in the habit of happiness,' muses June in Maggie Stiefvater's wonderfully observed—actually, flat-out wonderful—historical novel 'The Listeners.' The protégée of the man whose family has long owned the hotel, June diligently maintains dozens of gray-jacketed ledgers stuffed with observations and reminders about the preferences of her high-society clientele. She endlessly challenges herself with a gnarly question: How does one delight the rich, 'who could so easily delight themselves?' But with U.S. involvement in World War II in its early months, the Avallon is, for a time, closed to its usual clientele and bracing for a whole new slate of visitors: diplomat internees from the Axis countries and a clutch of G-men to keep a gimlet eye on them. The storyline is based on actual events. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Greenbrier, a tony retreat in White Sulphur Springs, was put into service as a cushy detention center for German, Italian and Japanese legates and their families. It was a bid by the U.S. government to encourage similar treatment for its own envoys abroad. Ms. Stiefvater is known as an author of young-adult fantasy series, among them 'The Wolves of Mercy Falls' and 'The Raven Cycle.' While otherwise realistic, 'The Listeners,' her first novel for adults, has one discrete fantastical element: it concerns so-called sweetwater, the odoriferous H2O that flows hard through the Avallon fonts, and is understood and mollified by June and June alone.
NZ Herald
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Book of the day: The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
American writer Maggie Stiefvater's first novel for adults is a hugely satisfying read that shuts out the rest of the world. Photos / Supplied Maggie Stiefvater's latest novel has a deliciously intriguing premise: in 1942, June Hudson, the general manager of a very upmarket hotel in West Virginia, is told in no uncertain terms by US authorities that she is to accommodate a group of enemy diplomats after the US joins the allies in
New York Times
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Fantasy Novel Inspired By Real History, When U.S. Hotels Housed Nazis
THE LISTENERS, by Maggie Stiefvater There's something peculiarly fascinating about novels set in self-enclosed communities with their own rules: a ship at sea, a research outpost, a university. While the inhabitants of such places may believe themselves to be insulated from the outside world, their stories tend to prove them wrong. In 'The Listeners,' the adult debut from the best-selling young adult author Maggie Stiefvater, the community in question is a hotel called the Avallon, built on West Virginia mineral springs. The surrounding area is hardscrabble coal country, but the Avallon is an island of luxury, a retreat for 'people so high on the social ladder they had to duck for the sun to go overhead.' And it's all overseen by June Hudson, the hotel's manager, whose 'holler-bred accent' betrays her humble origins and who sees her job as 'intentionally curating joy for anyone who came.' A self-made hospitality prodigy, June led the Avallon through the Great Depression without sacrificing its commitment to the finer things. But now it's 1942, and war will test her skills in a whole new way. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the State Department is relocating captured Axis diplomats to upscale hotels pending an exchange for their imprisoned American counterparts abroad. At the Avallon, June must expel her well-heeled guests and give their rooms to Nazis and Japanese imperialists. This premise is based on real events. Some American hotels really did house enemy diplomats during World War II. But at the fictional Avallon, with its reputation as 'a place where past and future were erased, replaced by an immutable, carefree present,' the repercussions of this unusual arrangement are perilous. The bad vibes that arrive with the new guests threaten the Avallon's main attraction: the springs that run under the hotel and fill it with scents of 'perfume, blood, fruit, dirt, caves, blossoms.' The sweetwater is, you see, a bit alive. June's special sensitivity to it is one of the secrets to her success, and she fears the water will react poorly to the hotel's new occupants, who are essentially pampered prisoners. Melding history and fantasy in fiction can be tricky, but Stiefvater deftly pulls off this particular magic via a resonant central metaphor. For June, the 'guiltless game of luxury' is itself a form of enchantment that involves anticipating unspoken needs and smoothing over conflicts. Her mystical relationship with the water follows naturally from the same ability to 'listen' that makes her a superlative hotelier, and she's fully committed to the sleight of hand required to maintain the Avallon's legend. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
