The Echoes

Peta's Review 

Although Evie Wyld now lives mainly in London, the fact that she grew up in Australia and often spends time here means that we can claim her as one of us. Wyld herself said in a recent interview that she is torn between the two countries, and also believes that her nostalgia for Australia stems from her Australian mother’s chronic ‘homesickness’ for her rural New South Wales hometown. Significantly then, each of Wyld’s novels is set in both a fictional Australian town and a British location. Her first three novels were published to wide acclaim, including winning the Miles Franklin Award for All the Birds Singing, and the 2021 Stella Prize for The Bass Rock.  

Wyld’s new novel The Echoes shows her working at the peak of her craft as a writer and a storyteller. I think it’s her best yet. The story moves between the London flat where Max and Hannah live, and a rural working-class area in outback Australia. Max and Hannah are a thirty-something couple: he is a Creative Writing teacher, Hannah a barmaid at a local pub. The obvious tension between them stems mainly from the fact that Max wants children, while Hannah does not. There’s also the fact that Max is dead. The novel reveals from the outset that he’s been unable to cross over to the afterlife because he believes there is something he needs to discover. And discover he does, as he listens to Hannah’s conversations with her best friend Janey. He learns about how he died, Hannah’s abortion, and the trauma which haunts her life. Promise, no spoilers! But despite what he learns, he still cannot move on. He is stuck with the dust motes and spiders and the procession of tenants who come and go over the decades.

While the novel has a complicated structure, Wyld makes it accessible by using headings – After, Before, and Then – and making clear in each section who is speaking. She is particularly skilled at placing the reader in place and time. Sometimes a detail is enough: beginning a chapter with the news that the serial killer David Birnie has hanged himself not only places the reader in Perth during 1980s and 90s; it also chillingly suggests that something dark is about to happen.

The title The Echoes is also crucial to an understanding of the novel. The concept of an echo, a device often used by writers, is used by Wyld to stunning effect. The novel’s concluding lines, for example, echo the end of its opening chapter. When I read the last few lines, I gasped, and immediately went back to the opening chapter, knowing there were many nuances I had missed on my first reading. The Echoes is also the name of the land where Hannah grew up. There is also the echo in her empty flat as she closes the door for the final time. Look out, indeed listen for, other echoes as you read.

While The Echoes is a tough read, it is extremely worthwhile. It is dark, but there are moments of humour and pure tenderness. An excellent choice for bookclubs, and for all lovers of beautifully written, thought-provoking novels. 

Publisher’s Review 

Set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a story about the weight of the past and the promise of the future.

Max didn't believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him.

In the weeks and months before Max's death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and an autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them. It asks what of our past we can shrug off and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.

'This is stranger, darker and more brilliant than anything she's written before... a book that will stay with you for ever - both intimate and extraordinarily ambitious.' - OBSERVER

*Books to Look Out For 2024*