About the Book

Benjamin and Dita Stern are seasoned New Yorkers whose life in the pre-war, Upper East Side building Benjamin’s grandfather built has settled into stasis—two children no longer at home, professional lives never fully realized. Then Benjamin's brash younger brother Spence, founder and CEO of the hearing aid company Belphonics, asks him to collaborate on a new product line inspired by the brothers' rock-and-roll youth at CBGB's—the club where, Spence believes, his hearing was permanently damaged. If the idea works, it might salvage Benjamin and Dita's tenuous financial position. Yet they both know that getting involved in Spence's schemes comes at a high price.

That same evening, with the Sterns’ daughter Alessandra over for dinner, Benjamin’s news is upstaged by the startling appearance of their son, Giorgio, whose violent adolescent behavior resulted in his being sent away for most of high school. Now seventeen, he is adrift and still a very troubled young man. As Benjamin and Dita reckon with their parental choices, Giorgio takes the reins of his own story, and we learn not only that his name is not, in fact, Giorgio, but also the extent to which all the Sterns share some measure of responsibility for his plight. 

A funny and deeply felt debut novel from poet and memoirist Jonathan Wells, The Sterns Are Listening explores a family on the verge of both collapse and regeneration. Brimming with affection for its troubled characters and the troubled city they call home, the novel traces a courageous path to the deeply uncomfortable heart of the matter, one that just might lead to redemption.

Praise for The Sterns Are Listening

“A deeply felt, richly detailed, and imaginatively conceived literary novel that would be comic if there wasn’t serious darkness at its core…. We are introduced to the Sterns, a Jewish family living on New York’s Upper East Side, who might feel comfortable at home in a novel by Laurie Colwin or even Taffy Brodesser-Akner…. [The] inventive concept gives Wells license to write about all sorts of music from the late 1970s on, rapturously about some (Tom Verlaine and Television, for example), and dismissively about others (The Rolling Stones). Wells knows his records and has a great sense of the importance we attach to the soundtrack of our lives.”

—Tom Teicholz, Forbes

“In The Sterns Are Listening, Jonathan Wells gives us a touching, beautifully observed and very funny portrait of a 21st century Manhattan family sliding slowly down the American dream. Benjamin Stern’s wife is turning Italian, his teenage son is coming out of a forced exile, and his brother is trying to enlist him in a scheme to market flashy hearing aids to aging rock n roll fans.  If you ever wondered what became of the next generation of Glasses and Angstroms, listen to The Sterns.

–Bill Flanagan, author of A&R and Fifty in Reverse

“The Sterns are Listening begins in the summer heat in NYC, a heat without relief, a heat where ‘hope seems futile.’ But hope is at the core of Wells’ excellent debut novel where the Stern family—frayed to the breaking—must find a way to move forward. How Wells manages to make this tender and painful novel also filled with humor and generosity is part of its magic and his deep compassion as a writer. It is such a compelling read—I sat down and didn't do another thing until I was done."

—Victoria Redel, author of Loverboy

“The Sterns Are Listening is a novel, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t predict what is sure to happen in the next few years, which is the invention of hearing aids for boomers who went to too many loud concerts back in the day. ‘What if by wearing them you showed the world that you had lost your hearing for something you loved and that you knew it had been a worthy sacrifice?’ says one of the characters. As with many a business venture, especially ones involving family members, chaos ensues, but things work out nicely in the end. In between, you’ll laugh and probably also drag your knuckle down the side of your nose a time or two, and if you’re like me, you’ll also think about getting your hearing checked. But weren’t those concerts fun? So’s this novel.”

—David Kirby

“I loved The Sterns Are Listening. Giorgio/Mark is a wonderful creation, both maddening and appealing and the story's truth teller, a little like the son in Revolutionary Road, but from inside the family. Benjamin's plight is compelling, and Wells captures the baffling nature of parenthood especially well. But I could say the same thing about the difficulty of being part of a family, the cage match from which you can't escape. And yet there is a well-earned sweetness at the end. A terrific novel.”

—Scott Lasser, author of Say Nice Things about Detroit

“In The Sterns are Listening, Jonathan Wells creates an astutely observed family saga, by turns funny, others poignant, always compelling; Wells cuts to the heart of what it means to belong in family, and all the mess and guts that entails.”

—Ali Millar, author of The Last Days and Ava Anna Ada

“In serious and well-crafted chapters, we experience what life was like for Giorgio in the wilderness, his lengthy test of survival without shelter in the rugged mountains . . . Importantly, Wells presents other plot elements involving acute uncertainty . . . Wells wrestles a multifaceted storyline into a coherent whole, which is no small task . . . He deftly deals with the ability to ‘dwell peacefully in doubt’ within the liminal space between knowing and not knowing. This substantial underlying vein within The Sterns Are Listening is where the novel’s virtue and its value lie.”

—R.P. Finch, PopMatters

Praise for The Skinny

“One of the most vulnerable memoirs I’ve ever read, Jonathan Wells’ The Skinny is the story of surviving the long, brutal gauntlet toward manhood that many boys who grew up in the 1970s and ’80s endured. An important cautionary tale illuminating the devastating, lifelong harm caused by rigid gender rules and the parents who try to enforce them.”

—Bill Clegg, author of Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and The End of the Day

"Layer by layer, Jonathan Wells unravels the father-son knot in ways both troubling and uplifting. I was gripped by The Skinny, a remarkable portrait of the most tangled of relationships, written with a poet's eye and grace."

—Roger Cohen, author of The Girl from Human Street: A Jewish Family Odyssey

"This touching memoir of growing up in suburban New York in the ’70s and ’80s reads a bit like outtakes from Mad Men, if told from the perspective of a teenager with a more nuanced point of view on the overwhelming tropes of masculinity that dominated that era… This coming-of-age chronicle is lushly rendered and touchingly intimate, a critique that is loving and unsparing at the same time." 

—Chloe Schama, Vogue, Best Books of the Sum

"A poetic remembrance of pain and forgiveness that rivals Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life in its power to enthrall."

—Airmail Weekly

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