Listen by Sacha Bronwasser explores who gets seen—and who gets silenced

Sacha Bronwasser’s Listen is a quiet, unsettling novel that stares straight into the power imbalance between those who look and those who are looked at—and asks what happens when the powerless finally start to speak. Translated from Dutch, Listen unfolds slowly, like a photograph coming into focus, until the image becomes both vivid and painful.

The novel moves between Paris and the Netherlands, between 1989 and 2015, tracing two women—Eloise and Marie—whose lives briefly overlap through the same family and the same Paris apartment. Both arrive as au pairs, both nearly invisible to the family they serve, and both find themselves noticed at last only when that attention becomes dangerous.

Bronwasser uses these parallel narratives to explore how people in positions of authority—whether parents, employers, or professors—so often fail to see those beneath them as fully human. For the wealthy Parisian family, Eloise is just another interchangeable au pair, one in a long line of caretakers swapped out yearly like smoke alarm batteries. When Philippe, the father, finally “notices” her, it’s not because she’s done anything to stand out—it’s because he decides to see her. His interest first appears to be sexual, but then shifts into something stranger, a conviction that she is fated for harm. His fixation becomes its own quiet form of violence.

When we meet Marie, she’s older and more self-assured, but her story peels back another layer of exploitation. After leaving the Netherlands to step into Eloise’s former place as the new nanny, Marie’s memories lead us back to her time as an art student—and to a manipulative photography professor whose control over her feels disturbingly familiar. Bronwasser juxtaposes the personal with the political: the bombings that shake Paris in both 1989 and 2015 echo the constant assaults young women endure from those who hold power over them.

The novel is undeniably a slow burn—sometimes too slow. The first section, devoted to Eloise, moves at such a deliberate pace that I struggled to stay engaged. Very little happens beyond atmosphere and unease, and it could easily have been woven into the later sections where the story gains momentum. But when Marie’s perspective takes over, the pacing steadies and the emotional stakes sharpen, and the earlier pieces begin to make sense.

What Listen captures with precision is the way exploitation often masquerades as mentorship or protection. The photography professor who manipulates Marie’s devotion isn’t a monster in the obvious sense, but her behavior exposes how easily authority can slide into abuse. We so often blame victims for “getting themselves into it,” rather than asking why those with power feel entitled to harm or exploit the vulnerable.

Listen asks us to pay attention—to the unseen, the unheard, and the ways power distorts perception. It’s not an easy read, but it’s a thoughtful, piercing one, and its quiet intensity lingers long after the final page. Readers drawn to literary fiction that examines complicity and control will find much to reflect on here.

Have you read Listen or another novel that explores power and perception in this way? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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