An eerie road trip novel that mixes marriage and madness

Sometimes the one you love can drive you crazy.

That unsettling truth is at the center of Hannah Pittard's "Listen to Me" — a road trip novel that will keep you up late at night.

"Listen to Me" follows Mark and Maggie, a couple nearing eight years of marriage, living a quiet life in Chicago. Their life starts to fracture, however, after Maggie is mugged on the street. The attack leaves her shaken and hesitant to even leave the house.

Her anxiety is only heightened when police connect her attack to a murder in the neighborhood. Should she get a gun? she wonders.

Amid this growing paranoia, Maggie and Mark hit the road, bound for his parents' house on the East Coast. Their path leads straight through areas devastated by storms, and the damage tangles their trip. There's no electricity, nowhere to stay, and a growing sense that someone might be following them.

The tension rages on inside the car as well, as Maggie and Mark pick at each other's sore spots, arguing over little details that hint at larger fissures.

Pittard joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to discuss the novel, which the New York Times praised for its twisty plot.

From the New York Times:

"Some of the driving sequences echo Steven Spielberg's first full-length film, "Duel," and "1984" is evoked when Maggie and Mark arrive, near the end of their odyssey, at what seems like the shelter of a West Virginia hotel, where they narrowly escape being put into Room 101. Never mind the echoes of Stephen King that any remote, broken-down rest stop recalls."

At its heart, Pittard said, the book is about marriage: It's "about this strange institution that we willingly enter into, even though it is clearly madness."

For the full interview with Hannah Pittard on "Listen to Me," use the audio player above.