The Echoes

Wow, this book really caught me by surprise. I was expecting to like it but wasn't expecting to love it as much as I did. It's one of the best examples of multiple POVs that I've read in a long time - maybe ever. Each narrative voice is so strong and unique that you're never lost in the story. This book is both hilarious and heartbreaking. I found the characters and the story so compelling, and the way it only lets you in slowly meant I couldn't put it down. Honestly, this might be a new favourite of mine, it was just excellent and I can't wait to get myself the physical copy when it comes out! 4.5 stars rounded up, but depending on how this stews in my bead over the next couple of weeks it may be bumped to the full 5! Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher, Jonathan Cape, for this ARC, I'm delighted I got to read it so soon!

This is a really powerful novel dissecting the relationship between Max and Hannah after his death. The movement between timelines and character development is beautiful as is the writing style

Evie Wyld can really write. She knows her timelines and her characters and builds her story to a taut and intense and emotional read. There’s always darkness and violence in her books but she doesn’t describe it, she shows the effects on her characters and how they cope and somehow get on with their lives. The main character in this book is Hannah, an Australian woman living in a flat in London with her boyfriend Max. The flat is near a house where her grandmother lived before moving to Australia. The other major narrative is the ghost of Max in the flat (Surprisingly it works here, dead narrators don’t always work for me). That’s the ‘After’ thread, then there’s ‘Before’ about Max and Hannah’s relationship, and ‘Then’ set in Hannah’s childhood growing up in a house in ‘The Echoes’ on land where there’s also a schoolhouse that trained Aboriginal girls taken from their families. (Yes, there’s a graveyard, definitely not good vibes here). A powerful read.

Absolutely breathtaking, no-one writes about intergenerational female trauma like Evie Wyld. A truly mesmerising, powerful and heartbreaking novel. I loved how Evie used time in this novel, and she really cleverly switches between character perspectives. Brilliant, as always!

The Echoes is a complex and powerful novel about intergenerational trauma, moving between Australia and London.

We are initially introduced to Max, a creative writing professor who now haunts his girlfriend Hannah's apartment in London and powerlessly watches Hannah's grief after his sudden death. the novel then cycles back to show us the faultlines in Max and Hannah's life together as a couple, and Hannah's childhood in Australia, growing up on a goat farm on a piece of land called The Echoes, previously home to a colonial school and before that to indigenous people whose absence reverberates throughout the novel. Evie Wyld also shows us the past lives of many others connected to Hannah - her parents, her sister Rachel, her uncle Tone and his partner Melissa, the retired schoolmaster Manningtree and her grandmother Natalia who originally left London for Australia two generations before. Through these connected stories, we see how trauma and abuse form part of a vicious cycle.

This is a compact novel with real depth. It is frequently funny, particularly in tracing the contours of Max and Hannah's relationship (including some wonderful culinary moments), but also profound in the questions it asks, particularly about the unspoken shadow cast by colonial violence: as Hannah's Uncle Tone observes "My roots shouldn't be growing over those bones." The awkward silence with which this observation is met encapsulates the deep uneasiness the novel's characters feel in navigating this subject.

This is both a challenging and rewarding read. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

The story centres on Hannah and her dead boyfriend Max, who, as a ghost, provides a fresh and ironically humorous viewpoint. The novel is primarily driven by their relationship, switching between different timelines and viewpoints. It is an intense read, one that deals with tough topics such and abuse and grief.

It's also a read that stays with you long after you finish it. Highly recommended for those looking for a deep and beautifully written story.

Wow. ‘The Echoes’ by Evie Wyld, will undoubtedly be a contender as my favourite read of 2024. Wyld sure can write and it’s one of those incredible page turners that also make you want to slow down to absorb every word. It’s a vivid novel that will stay with me for long time.

Echoes is largely about a relationship that was ‘not perfect. But just right’, between Hannah and Max, and the life that went on before and after tragedy. We therefore know from the offset that Max is also the ghost of the husband past and his ending isn’t going to be a happy one. I was intrigued as to how a ghostly character would work and also somewhat concerned that I may find it to be a silly device; but the effect was far from it, it allowed us a unique perspective on the lives Max witnessed after his death, in a way that would only be possible through the omnipresence of a ghostly spectre. Max also offered a humorous, and ironic narrative at times, which was richly effective and gave the whole plot an entirely extra dimension. Oh and Cotton the cat deserves a mention here too - he deserves his own riotous applause.

The novel’s structure is defined by chapters around the ever changing time periods ‘before’ his death, ‘after’ and ‘then’, along with individual chapters which provide character focus on singular minor characters, to add extra perspective and plot depth. The revelations that come throughout the development of the story are often not an easy read, as past traumas are unsurfaced, but boy is it well crafted.

It’s an incredibly intimate novel, with a remarkable level of literary observation. And the ending… no spoilers, but I think it’s exquisite! I will be seeking out Evie Wyld’s back catalogue for sure.

I feel very honoured to have received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review of ‘The Echoes’. I highly recommend it.

A stunning dark, intimate, and affecting book which grabbed my attention from the first page.

Recently dead Max haunts the London flat where Hannah his grieving girlfriend still lives. They are both stricken by the loss of what they could have been and the recognition of what they never were.

While Max permeates the flat, trying to make some kind of contact with her, Hannah is dogged by her past, a dark thing of desperation and trauma which she has tried to bury, and which brought her from the Australian bush to this precise place 

The timelines shift between generations and countries exploring Hannah’s secret, and the couple’s shared, pasts, and revealing the monstrous and beautiful complexities of human connection.

We see the harsh realities of trauma and the pernicious coping strategies which can inhibit our ability to move beyond the echoes of our past, or cause us to amplify those echoes. There are horrors, glimpsed fleetingly - like ghosts, no less - and they linger for us, and for the characters, without melodrama, They seep into us. A cold clammy weight, growing heavier as we piece together the fragments of Hannah’s family history.

It’s not an easy comfortable read by any means, and it contains pretty much every trigger you could expect.

It is dark and strange and it will settle around your shoulders for days after you have finished it. You will marvel at the economy and precision with which Wyld can depict a complex relationship dynamic or a shrouded tension, and make you see and feel it all while keeping so much unsaid and unseen.

Remarkable and brilliant.

Evie Wyld’s ‘The Echoes’ opens with first-person narration from Max, a ghost, as he watches his (ex) girlfriend Hannah roam around in the London flat they shared. Subsequent chapters switch between ghost Max, Hannah’s perspective before the accident that resulted in Max’s death, and third-person narration exploring Hannah’s youth and estranged family decades previously in Australia. The result is that what I expected to be a quirky novel about death and life after death proved instead to be a thoughtful, engaging and moving examination of abuse, generational trauma (this term is thrown around a lot, but I think is very accurate here) and colonialism.

While the subject matter sounds heavy - and it is, Wyld is dealing with some very big themes here - the novel never feels remotely like a struggle. The prose is so engaging, witty and often beautiful and I found it completely involving. I loved Max and Hannah, both of them flawed and human and incredibly well-realised. Their relationship is complicated and messy, with both of them failing to communicate well and hiding things from each other - which we see through the eyes of Hannah in the moment, and Max after his death, stuck watching Hannah in the flat they shared.

The real core of the novel, though, are the sections revealing Hannah’s childhood and family life - another thing she keeps secret from Max. This storyline unravels slowly, perfectly paced and constantly engaging. Scenes of happy family life are haunted by a looming sense that something has to go wrong; we are introduced to Hannah’s family and grow to care for them deeply, all the while moving gradually closer to finding out what was the catalyst behind her eventual estrangement. It’s a beautifully layered plot, delving into the psyche and history of each character, and the land that they live on.

Ultimately this is a novel about dealing with the echoes of the past - the dark and complicated histories that Hannah, chiefly, contends with. The prose is witty and often fun, but the themes and ideas at play are complex and dark. I thought this was a hugely accomplished novel from an author I hadn’t read before - but am now desperate to read more from. Massively recommended, and without a doubt one of my top books of this year.

A quietly devastating novel about family, relationships, and ghosts. (The kind that haunt places and people who think they can be free of the past.) Set partly in Australia and partly in London, this book was unputdownable for me, beautifully written, lightened by humour and really believable relationships.

Wow! What an intriguing jigsaw puzzle of a book, from its opening line spoken by a ghost, “I do not believe in ghosts, which since my death, has become something of a problem”, to the fractured narration in vignette format, split between time-lines, different locations and different voices.

On the surface it is the story of the relationship between Hannah and Max, a couple in their thirties, strained by whether they should marry and have children. We learn early on that Hannah has just undergone an abortion but unknown to Max. In their six-year relationship, Hannah has kept her past a secret. She has never introduced Max to her parents in Australia.

Through this intricately structured book, Hannah’s backstory slowly and tantalisingly unfolds, with its secrets and past traumas, revealing four generations of the family Max has been kept away from. From Hannah’s early childhood in Australia, growing up in the shadow of a dilapidated reform school for indigenous children,(The Echoes) to her adolescent longings and emotional confusion as she becomes aware of the strange relationship between her older sister Rachel and uncle Tone, her mother’s brother. He is a hard-drinking labourer with a quick temper who can’t keep down a job and whose upbringing, like her own mother’s, is one involving drink, drugs and child abuse.

Hannah hoped that with Max she could leave her past behind, but her past won’t go away, it expresses itself in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max. She struggles in her adult life in London, self-harming and refusing to confront her past. Max the reluctant ghost watches his girlfriend in their shared flat as she works through her grief at his death. He slowly begins to realise that he didn’t really know her. Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape.

This beautifully written book full of pathos and humour, is often unsettling as it explores loss, grief, traumatic pasts and complex relationships. However, the end does offer hope, and left me with a sense of closure.

The Echoes is Evie Wyld’s fourth book apparently. It is a short novel, but goodness me, she packs a lot into it. I had never heard of the author before. But thank you NetGalley for introducing her to me and I look forward to catching up with her other books.

Yvonne Maxwell
31st July 2024

I found this really emotional! So insightful on grief and missed chances and how life can take unexpected turns. A great central mystery plot at the heart of it too.

A beautifully written complex novel about secrets and trauma set in Australia and London. As you go back and forth in time and place, and get different perspectives from various characters, all secrets from the past are slowly being unfolded. Intense, impressive and absolutely brilliant!
Thanks you Jonathan Cape and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

This novel is so much more that can ever be expressed by words.
It is a tender study of humanity, relationships, mistakes that can never be erased but can perhaps be healed. Spanning across decades and continents, Evie Wyld’s characteristic style conjures vivid memories, images and powerful feelings. A brief but impactful read that, like her other novels, will be on my mind for a very long time.
With many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of this novel in exchange for this honest review.

Wyld's fourth novel is arguably her strongest yet - and that's saying something for such a consistently strong writer. Her trademark narrative puzzle trail is put to brilliant work here – as ghost Max, (bound to the London flat he shared with girlfriend, Hannah) attempts to uncover how he died. Meanwhile, the recently bereaved Hannah's childhood in rural Australia is revealed in beautifully managed stages. Deeply moving and wonderfully balanced. Five stars all round.

Max is trapped in purgatory. Why? What will it take to set him free from the flat he shares with his girlfriend, Hannah? And as he watches her grieve, we are transported into their past, witnessing the complexities of their love and the ways they let each other down; and then taken back much further, to Hannah's family in Australia and the terrible secrets they hid. As we slowly understand what happened to Max, and what caused Hannah to flee her country, we explore trauma through the eyes of her relatives. Each one has a section that changes our understanding of them, and unpacks levels to the dark history of their property and their relationships, while remaining propulsive and tense. It's a true feat to write a story that is both a character story and a pacy mystery, but Evie Wyld has done it. I devoured this.

Thank you NetGalley for this review copy!