Listening Still: Story of undertaker with supernatural gift imbued with tender humour
Magic realism sets the tone in Anne Griffin’s novel Listening Still, where the protagonist is able to sit and chat with the recently deceased
FICTION
Listening Still
By Anne Griffin
Sceptre, €18.99
Whether you enjoy Anne Griffin’s second novel or not depends on one thing: can you get your head around the book’s central premise? The entire novel hinges on whether the reader believes in the extraordinary ability of the narrator, Jeanie Masterson, a Midlands undertaker who can speak to the recently deceased.
It’s not that Jeanie intuits fragments of the dead person’s feelings in some shamanistic ritual involving ...