I finished this book a couple of days ago and I am still a little unsure of my thoughts. It follows the Cleverly family who are all strange in their own ways but I am going to leave it to you to meet them as the author intends. But I will say, take the most dysfunctional family you know and multiply them many fold and you're only just at the edge of how bad they are!
The narrative follows each member of the family - Parents George and Beverley (yes, Beverley Cleverley - the mind boggles) and their respective careers and how precarious they are. And then we have the three children and, as so often these days, all kinda living off the fame and notoriety, and money, of their parents.
It skirts around social media and the good and bad it delivers. Touches on wokism and all that entails. How saying the wrong thing on twitter can spiral out of control and, a current favourite bugbear of mine, cancel culture. It's all a bit larger than life but that's half the fun. At times so cringeworthy and tricky to read as you know what's coming and you feel embarrassed for the characters - or is that just me ?
Often Ortonesque in the way it all degenerates into farce in a rather absurd way, especially some of the relationship chasing certain characters enact. But, at the same time, laugh out loud funny too. I'd be more than happy to welcome the book into my favourite genre of novel - bonkers - cos that is something it most definitely is.
As an aside, I'd have really loved to witness Joe Orton's take on the world as we know it these days, but that's sadly not to be. I can only imagine...
The characters are larger than life and, on the whole, rather detestable. But they all have redeeming characteristics that kinda forced me to care about what happened and that in turn kept me reading on, despite the occasional discomfort. Flitting between them, their antics kept me on my toes and short chapters allowed the book to get on with itself at a fair lick too.
But there is a moral to be found in the book. And that is around the perils and pitfalls of social media and how one slip can come back to bite you - a slip in the present such as some depicted herein, or one from your past - just ask the numerous famous faces who have been forced (and I mean forced) to apologise for one thing they said eons ago when they were a child, a person bearing little resemblance to whom they are today, or taken well out of time and context. Gets my goat. Climbs down off soapbox.
Life is fragile. Fame can be fleeting, or at least taken away just as quick as it arrived. Hold on to what you have, and don't get drawn into those popcorn moments on twitter. Satire has never been closer to real life...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

John Boyne’s latest offering takes on social media platforms and the role they are playing in our lives. Meet the Cleverleys or maybe not! George, Beverley and their three offspring. Successful, wealthy and privileged yet each is living an alternative version of themselves that unravels over the course of a week. The book is nicely structured with each part starting with a look back to earlier times in their lives when their focus was each other and also the commencement of different social media platforms. Question is would their lives and indeed society in general be different without the influence of social media? The main characters are well supported by minor players, all well developed characters that contribute immensely to the overall novel with perhaps one exception. The scene with the headmaster seemed out of character with the tone of the book but was, I felt, a turning point in the book. After that it seemed to become somewhat farcical although perhaps that is the intention. An entertaining novel, some genuine laugh out loud moments, with a message at its heart. What exactly that message is may well be up to the individual reader and how woke they are.

I’ve long been a fan of a John Boyne, and foolish me I thought he had failed to deliver in the early stages of this book. However as I read on I grew to love the story revolving around the Cleverley family and the role of social media in their lives.

This book should really come with a health warning for those on the various social media platforms, and is very much a book of our times. John Boyne does at times make you look at the use of social media again and whether it is wise to have a social media presence, or why you even have that presence.

Bu the end of this book I truly loved it and didn’t want to put it down, especially as the train wreck that social media was building in the Cleveleys’ lives became much more apparent. Whilst not the wisest, or the people you could learn to love, I did become fond of them and their exploits. Overall this book ended up being a great hit for me and is something that everyone on social media should read, but it won’t always make comfortable reading. There were quite a few funny moment or sentences within the story.

I definitely recommend this book, along with John Boyne’s many other books.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for providing a copy of this book for me, for an an open and honest review.

The Echo Chamber is a curious read. It’s being touted as biting satire and a topical exploration of our obsession with social media…I’m not wholly convinced that’s quite what we’ve got, but it’s an entertaining diversion in some areas.
The focus of the book is the Cleverley family. George has been a favourite of the BBC for years, prone to the odd gaffe on air and his wife, Beverley, is a writer of popular romances (though she employs a ghost writer and merely gives the ideas) who has been having an affair with her partner on Strictly. Their three children have led a rather charmed life, and the whole family is obsessed with their social media accounts and profiles. The story (such as it is) focuses on a short period of time in their lives when everything blows up in spectacular fashion, leading them to reflect on their reliance on others’ affirmations.
As I was reading this I couldn’t help but rail at just how unlikeable each of the characters was. Much was made of the role social media had in this family’s trials and tribulations, but they seemed to be doing a very effective job of being rather unlikeable and messing things up in their own. For us to care about the fates of the characters there really has to be something about them we might like/admire. This was lacking, so it meant I read the book not really feeling anything had happened to these characters that they weren’t instrumental in bringing about.
There were some moments of mild amusement, but some of the observations became repetitive and simply telling us over and over again about an issue without offering any alternative doesn’t really seem the point of satire. For too much of the book it felt like Boyne had generated his own echo chamber. The reading of this felt like ordering and drinking an overpriced coffee, where everything was superficially appealing but the reality was full of froth with little substance.
I’m grateful to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to give my honest thoughts on this prior to publication, but it was not quite the experience I’d hoped for.

I don’t usually enjoy satire but John Boyne is a master story teller and anything that he writes makes a compelling read. The Echo Chamber is no exception. It is funny, clever and even moving in places. The author’s sharp observations and insights in the modern life are spot on.

4.5★
“But you have to appreciate that we’re not talking about normal people here. We’re talking about people on Twitter. There’s an enormous difference. It’s like comparing house cats to lions that have only ever lived in the wild, ripping the heads off young gazelles and feasting on their bodies.”

Yes, well, the people on Twitter. But it’s not only Twitter. George Cleverley, his wife Beverley, son Nelson, daughter Elizabeth, and son Achilles were a comfortable family as the kids were growing up. George is a famous, popular TV host, and Beverley is a much-loved “writer” of romance novels. Or rather, she wrote one and has her name on the cover of many more that are written by ghosts.

The children grew up with a succession of these ghosts in their lives. The book opens with George and the first two children waiting nervously in hospital for Beverley to have the third baby. She is in some trouble, and George is beside himself with worry.

So far, so normal. But the family’s story is punctuated with the technological advances of the day. As the doctor appears to tell them Beverley is okay and George is crying with relief, the author inserts this comment:

“And at that precise moment, in a dorm room at Harvard University, a nineteen-year-old boy presses the return button on his computer keyboard and watches as the first post on something he’s called ‘The Facebook’ appears:

Mark Zuckerberg changed his profile picture.
just now.


Thus we see the lighting of the fuse that leads to the social media explosion which has blown up the world as we know it.

The story is completely over the top. It is a hoot. Boyne is very clear to warn us beforehand:

“This book is a work of satirical fiction and is not intended to be factual.”


I would call it Slapstick Satire and just what I was in the mood for.

It may not be factual, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are people who are, shall we say, ‘inspirations’ for some of these characters. Some are “wokesters” ( ‘The POOTs . . . The Permanently Outraged of Twitter”, and some are your garden variety bigots. Whatever you want to call them, they are engaging right now in mortal combat on Twitter, which is the focus of this story.

Boyne has a wonderful time with names and accents. I feel the same as George about his producer, “Ben Bimbaum, whose full name George always struggled to pronounce.” I can’t hear it in my head without hearing the quick drumbeat, the sting, that’s played after the punchline of a joke.

There’s a Ukranian playboy, Pylyp Tataryn, whose only real love is a 115-year-old tortoise. He is a handsome, skilful lover who seems to have slept with almost everyone, man or woman, in the story. His mother is a brain surgeon. I have no idea if the unusual names that crop up mean anything or are perhaps some kind of anagrams. But I don’t need to know.

This is a far-fetched, ridiculous, funny, biting look at how far we’ve come or how low we have sunk, depending on your point of view, and how attached to a smartphone you are. This is a family that thrives on “likes” and responses and approval.

George, who is certainly old-school, gets his pronouns mixed up (as do we all, I suspect) . A “he” has become “she”, while his daughter’s boyfriend has become “they”. (This is not a previous boyfriend named Tuscany Fields. Ah, the names!) When George tweets something meaning to sound supportive of a person transitioning from male to female, he botches it so badly that he is hauled over the coals by his boss, the Head of Entertainment, Margaret.

“‘You may have meant well, George, but intentions no longer matter. Social media has changed all that.’

‘Because, ironically, when it comes to social media, anything is acceptable and nothing is acceptable.’”

Until now, George has enjoyed Twitter and being a public figure. After all, as a popular TV host, he wields a fair bit of power. He knows that his boss is actually more expendable than he, ‘the talent’, so he’s comfortable arguing with her.

“‘I think it’s idiotic and it feels like the obsession of narcissistic morons with far too much time on their hands, but I accept that the culture exists in the world. Just like National Socialism did in the thirties. And McCarthyism in the fifties.’

‘Please don’t say anything like that on social media, George. Those are all very powerful lobbies.’

‘Not the Nazis. They got defeated.’

‘Well, they’re back. And, this time, they’ve all got Twitter accounts.’”

Daughter Elizabeth tells her parents why her boyfriend says he once had a sister, but not anymore.

“‘She got cancelled,’ said Elizabeth.

Beverley blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said she got cancelled.’

‘I heard what you said. It just didn’t seem to be a collection of words that, placed together in an otherwise reasonable sequence, made any sense.’
. . .
‘Your sister was cancelled,’ said George, trying out the phrase on his tongue. ‘I’m sorry, but is she a television programme, perhaps? Or a train timetable? A subscription service of some kind?’
. . .
‘Oh, Mother,’ said Elizabeth, throwing her hands in the air. ‘It means that she lost all her followers, no one talks to her any more and she’s considered a pariah. Like, in your day, when someone was sent to Coventry. Her friends have all abandoned her and she’s not welcome in polite society. Like Harvey Weinstein, say.’”

Son Nelson, in his twenties, is a social misfit while younger brother Achilles, still in high school, is handsome and seductive beyond his years. Needless to say, since the introduction of the various social platforms and the ease with which we can spy on each other, life has changed for this family. And ours? Probably.

Thanks for a great topical read, John, especially the bit where Elizabeth argues with herself between two of her Twitter accounts, trying to raise her profiles. Loved it all!

Thanks also to NetGalley and Random House/Transworld for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted, although I don’t think the selections I’ve chosen do justice to the book.

So, perhaps I should have read the synopsis before starting the book... I have loved this author's other work (hence why I blindly requested to read and review this) but this one really wasn't the read for me. I understand that it is a work of satire, but it also seems too excessive in its cultural criticisms, somehow. I constantly wondered what were the character's fictional thoughts and what were the author's own? Some of the wit did make me laugh but it was too overly farcical for me to continue to find enjoyment in the humour.

Ouch! John Boyne gets his back on the trolls who targetted him for his last novel. So although it is quite amusing in parts I really think he is wasting his talent on 'satire' like this and suspect The Echo Chamber could be a Marmite book. Many thanks to Net Galley and RandomHouse/Transworld for the opportunity to read and review it.

After hearing such great things, I expected great things from this author.
It didn't hold up to them, unfortunately. The satire was enjoyable initially, but then it became irritating, as if Boyne had a vendetta and used this book as a ranting device!
His books are vastly different, which I like and dislike at the same time! He is versatile, but it seems to me he has no writing style that means I go into a new book a little blind. This can work for or against the author in my opinion.
Some readers have loved this, but it's not for me. I liked the narration but found it difficult to appreciate it when I didn't like the book.

2.5

Oh dear. John Boyne wrote a book, a lot of people took offence (many without reading it) and his eventual response was to write this book.

There isn’t much of a plot as such in this one – the Cleverley family (BBC TV Journalist dad, novelist mum, three more or less adult children) are self-absorbed and social media obsessed and arguably never learn from their mistakes.

Yes, this is satire and I know it’s supposed to be funny, but the bitterness that shows through makes it excruciating to read. The pen may indeed be mightier than the sword and no one escapes a stabbing from it in this Burn Book. No chance to insult a public figure is missed – from the usual suspects to the seemingly benign – nor, inexplicably, is the entire population of Moldova safe. Some of the jokes wear painfully thin (under-30s haven’t heard of anyone or anything before the year 2000) and the only sympathetic character is a tortoise.

However, by the latter half of the book, the author seems to have worked out some of his resentment onto the page and it becomes a bit less scathing and defensive, a little more classically satirical and farcical. It did manage to coax a few smiles, and surprisingly, to make a couple of good points about society. I did feel the book was missing a foil though – some poor, put-upon, sensible person to counteract the mistakes and stupidity of the other characters. Perhaps the ghost-writer played this part to a certain extent, but she was only really there for Beverly.

I think I’ve read two John Boyne books before and I found them both thoughtful and moving (for the record, I have read the one that sparked the controversy). This book is quite a departure – more in the style of Sue Townsend.

Although it did level out in the second half (for which I’ve rounded it up to 3 stars), I can’t say I really enjoyed this book. The light-heartedness is much less when you can clearly hear the author is feeling anything but.

Thank you NetGalley and all for this ARC.

The Cleverley family: George, an ageing BBC chat show host, who should really keep up with the times; Beverley (Yes, Beverley Cleverley!) a successful novelist, well, in name anyway; Elizabeth, who’s followers are her world; Nelson, a man finding his way in a confused world (and through a lot of uniforms!); and Archilles, the idiot. You will love getting to know this family and their faults. Another great book by the brilliant John Boyne - definitely recommend!

I am a big John Boyne fan with 'The Heart's Invisible Furies' being my favourite, until now!!! I loved 'The Echo Chamber'. Satirical fiction would not be my favourite or go-to genre but this book has really changed my mind. There were many laugh out loud moments for me and I flew through this book even though I did not want it to end. John Boyne writes characters so well and even though you will not warm to any of the Cleverley family, you will still be very interested in all of them.

I will be recommending this book to everyone!

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for the chance to read this book.

I was really looking forward to reading this book as John Boyne's books are always a bit different, and this one is no exception. Not for him are relatable stories of families you might know. This is a story of a family like no other - all completely disfunctional in their own way.

First we have George Cleverley - National Treasure and TV Presenter - think Michael Parkinson. He is a stalwart of the BBC and interviews all the top celebrities - and is having an affair behind his wife's back that threatens to blow them all apart.

His wife, Beverley Cleverley, is a best selling author - the only thing is she hasn't actually written any of her own books for a very long time. She will think up vague plotlines and then pass them to her 'ghost' to actually carry out the mundane business of writing, leaving her free to persue other interests ie a very very much younger lover.

The eldest son Nelson is unsure of his sexuality, and has no confidence when it comes to dating unless he is dressed in a uniform. His therapists are trying to help but they may not have his best interests at heart.

The middle child Elizabeth has somewhat of a split personality and is completely Twitter addicted. Everything she does, and everyone she dates, is calculated solely to increase her Twitter following. Not being content with that she has an alter ego Twitter account which she uses to argue and bring down anyone and everyone - including her own father - and even herself on occasion.

The youngest son is Achilles, who everyone describes as a bit of an idiot. Young and incredibly good looking, Achilles uses his good looks and boyish charm to earn his own money - by exhortation.

Social media is a very precarious friend, and sometimes only a single incident can bring the whole pile of cards crashing down.

The book is satirical, and pokes fun at nearly everyone, and the very WOKE society we live in now. Sometimes people of a certain generation can mean well but slip up because of the minefield we have to tread these days to remain politically correct. It just surprises me that George's character, who has carried out live interviews for years, didn't come a cropper to political correctness years before. If you like John Boyne's books you will enjoy this one.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4120044584

From the publisher: What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds - and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept. The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.

My take: Clever, witty, brutal and very well written, this is a very modern take on a very modern family and the current state of social media. Very different in style to the author's other books but with his excellent writing talents ever present. Lots of satire, I found it to be quite a thought-provoking read and really quite funny. I would recommend as a commentary on modern life and a truly dreadful family!

JB is one of my all time favourite authors. I've rated every adult fiction novel of his that I've read 5 stars. So it truly saddens no one more than me that I'm rating this less than.

To begin with, the synopsis did not capture my interest. But I thought, “It's JB. It's going to be a good story, regardless.’ And while I agree with the message - the dangers of how deep social media has integrated itself in our lives, how reliant we are on it as individuals and as a society, and the often negative feedback loops that plague social media - it's just too… on the nose for me. JB has a really remarkable track record for nuanced characters and writing, but this is an over-the-top rant. I understand that that's the point, but it's a total miss for me. None of the characters are likeable and, even if they were, they're presented in such a caricature way that prevents me from taking any of them seriously.

I guess I'm just so used to JB writing more serious and subtle historical novels that this feels like it's written by a completely different author. Good for him for trying something new, I suppose, but satire is not the genre for me. Those who enjoy tongue-in-cheek humour should be able to appreciate this story more than me.

And I know that it's unlikely to love everything an author has ever written, so I'm just going to chalk it up to a personal miss and eagerly wait for JB's next book!

3.5 stars rounded up.

The Echo Chamber is a satire on today’s obsession with social media and the dangers of cancel culture and performative wokeness. It’s amusing and the characters are awful but hilarious, but the novel is a bit too on the nose for my liking. I think I agree with the author in some respects, but not in others and I’m not always sure I’m comfortable laughing at the scenarios.

Definitely an interesting read, especially considering the author’s own Twitter travails after he attempted to write a supportive transgender book but totally mucked up the pronouns.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

A good read .The novel is funny and warmhearted with plenty of issues that arise for George and Beverley Cleverly and their dysfunctional family in these times where social media is very prevalent now and where it is often misleading. All interesting characters and made me laugh out loud at times especially liked the ending was a very different read for me but enjoyed it

Anyone looking for the best, most versatile author of our times? Here’s a suggestion – John Boyne, and I’m making this claim after only reading 7 of his 21 books. There’s two timeless classics in his “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” and “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas” and this novel become the 5th of his five star reads, alongside “A Ladder To The Sky” and “The Boy At The Top Of The Mountain”. When he has missed out on a 5* rating his work is also extraordinary, the tightly structured stylistically so impressive “A Traveller At The Gates Of Wisdom” and his 2019 YA novel “My Brother’s Name Is Jessica”, with its focus on the family of a transgender teen which I found “marvellously empathic” but it missed out on 5* because I didn’t feel totally convinced by the main characters’ family set-up and felt it lacked some of the subtletly of his best work. My reviews for all of these titles can be found by following the links on this site.
What I did not appreciate was the fuss “My Brother’s Name Is Jessica” caused in the months after I read it. An interview with Boyne in last week’s Guardian (17/07/21) details this with backlash against it leading to online harassment, misrepresentation, death threats and a period of depression for the author. It also, far more positively, sowed the seeds for this, his latest novel for adults.
I cannot remember laughing out loud so much at a novel since another Irish author Paul Murray’s “The Mark And The Void” from 2015 and like that novel the humour is rooted very much in the present making it a book for 2021. Already, I’m acknowledging this may not have the longevity of his greatest work but it warrants five stars for the sheer enjoyment it gave me.
And yes, there is going to be some controversy again over this. At the centre is social media and the effects this has on one notable family, the Cleverleys. Father George is a BBC light entertainment staple, a chat-show host famous for many years (I’ve already seen Graham Norton praising this work and jokingly wanting to make clear this character is not based on him), his wife Beverley, a best-selling romantic novelist who now provides the ideas which are written up by a ghost-writer, who is herself celebrated enough to be having an affair with her Ukranian “Strictly Come Dancing” partner, a man who has spread his charms amongst the next generation of the Cleverley family; Nelson, in therapy and only able to cope with social interactions whilst wearing a uniform; Elizabeth, an online troll who gave me a great number of laugh out loud moments and Nelson, a teenage extortionist. They inhabit a world where the number of likes on your social media is what validates you as a person. Modern life is a minefield for this family and things soon go wrong with attempts to escape situations only making it worse. John Boyne is happy to tread on everyone’s toes using real-life celebrities to add to the humour.
“This is a work of satirical fiction and is not intended to be factual” states the publisher’s note at the beginning but satire is often not funny (as anyone attempting to watch the Britbox “Spitting Image” reboot will testify) but here it is. Another trap for the comic novel is that the humour often wanes before the mid-way point but Boyne is able to sustain it for the length of his work (only in a couple of places does the pace falter and that is occasionally due to over-reiteration which the author needs to employ to ensure we, as readers, are keeping up) and too often the humour in books becomes predictable whereas here I had no idea where this book was going which was a joy in itself.
Maybe some people will be upset by this and some people deserve to be upset by this but I think John Boyne has written a great comic novel of our time and which should provide a great tonic for these strange times we live in.
The Echo Chamber will be published by Doubleday on August 5th 2021. Many thanks to Lilly and the team at Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read an advance review copy.

Not the genre of book that I normally read and an author I'd never heard of (though had seen the film of the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) till I saw a newspaper interview with him about his own dreadful experience with social media. Well, I'm very grateful that I read that interview and took the plunge into something a bit different as I really enjoyed this book and read it in less than 24 hours. It was very funny and clever with believable characters (I used to work at the BBC so could really relate to some of the goings on - they were a little exaggerated but only a little!)
This felt very current with its scattered references to the pandemic. I liked that - it didn't bang on about Covid19 which would be tedious but mentioned it now and again.
A satisfying conclusion too. Didn't disappoint on any level and I'll be buying the author's other books now!

In the final chapter of this book, Boyne writes : "As...Kingsley Amis once said, if you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing." and I think he wrote this book as a tongue in cheek antagonistic poke at modern society, 'wokeness' and 'cancel culture'. And maybe I'm too woke myself, but it worked, it annoyed me.

Having read The Hearts Invisible Furies earlier this year and fallen in love with his character writing I was delighted to get an ARC of Boyne's latest novel through Netgalley. Sadly I was pretty aghast as I read through the first few chapters as there is not one likeable character in the lot. I love 'flaws and all' writing, but the family at the centre of the story and everyone that they knew were just horrible caricatures and it felt like they were written with a lot of anger.

For me personally if it were any other writer I would have given this 2* and given up part way through, and only 2 because it is of course wonderfully written. I didn't enjoy the story at all. But then this type of book is not one I'd usually enjoy anyway, so I've gone for 3* as it's probably the perfect holiday read for somebody, and the 'coming together' at the end was a mildly amusing turn in what I'd already accepted as a wholly unrealistic farcical world by then.

Richard E Grant narrated the audiobook and did a wonderful job of it!