Review: The Listeners, by Harrison Demchick

The Listeners by Harrison Demchick
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Harrison Demchick's The Listeners is a novel which, in this reviewer's opinion, could have been great, breaking all borders of genre. Alas, it falls short, due I believe to lack of good developmental editing. Certainly Demchick demonstrates he is a literary adept, with several passages that are breath-taking in their impact, and his concept is a new perspective on the much-overdone zombie apocalypse trope, enough so it kept this somewhat jaded reviewer reading. That says a great deal.

The story revolves, for the most part, around a young boy, Daniel Raymond, who finds himself adrift in a locked-down American city borough. There is the impression, through the boy's actions, he might be autistic, but that is never realized, so the reader is left to assume the boy is instead suffering from extreme shock. Simply put, the plot sees Daniel adopted by a quasi-religious male cult in which all followers, but for the leader, are relieved of their right ears so they might better hear the truth, or lies, we're not sure which because the lines become very blurred after awhile.

While the plague that destroys the city revolves around a zombie-creating virus, the real story is one of brutal survival and the bestiality of humankind, and ultimately becomes a vignette of gun-culture, jingoistic America. All very gritty and powerful stuff.

The actualisation, however, of the story is a confused and conflicting timeline that jumps so rapidly between past and present, without any linear landmarks in either period, that the story falters, stutters and several times comes very close to termination. Demichick's attempt to echo the protagonist's confusion and isolation through this timeline device is laudable, and with even a little guidance from Bancroft Press' editors would have been brilliant.

And while I'm greatly attracted to ambiguous endings because they often reflect life, Demchick's ending defies understanding and seems to completely contradict his protagonist's motivation. It's almost as though having gone on for too long (the story does tend to drag on after awhile), Demchick threw up his metaphorical hands and said, the hell with it, plucked an ending out of the air and tacked it on to his manuscript.

Having said all that, Demchick demonstrates clear promise as a writer, and I hope, with better editorial guidance, he will realize his full potential.

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