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!

Set across several timelines and two continents, The Echoes unfolds Hannah’s story, revealing what lies behind her reluctance to talk to her late partner, Max, about her Australian family let alone introduce him to them.
Hannah and her rebellious sister grew up, tainted by association with The Echoes, a brutal boarding school where indigenous girls suffered ‘developmental regulations’ to make them acceptable to white people. Their mother was a runaway, fleeing an alcoholic, abusive mother with her brother, even more damaged than she is. Hannah came to London to escape, obsessed with a photograph of her grandmother outside a house just two streets away from where she and Max bought an apartment. They’ve been together for six years, Max contemplating a proposal and the hopes of a child, when he dies suddenly.
Alternating between three narrative strands - Max’s observations, their life together before he died and Hannah’s Australian childhood - Wyld tells her story, so that we, and Max, slowly come to understand why Hannah is so taciturn about her past, finding it impossible to escape its burden. If, like me, the idea of a dead narrator feels like a step too far, don’t be put off. It’s a risky device, but it works, perhaps because Wyld laces Max’s strand with a light humour in contrast with Hannah’s much darker narrative through which themes of colonialism and abuse are woven. An engaging, unorthodox love story which I enjoyed although its resolution felt a little strained.

Hannah and Max’s relationship was never great, but now Max is dead, still present in the flat, watching his partner, waiting for the purgatory to end. It’s a tricksy book stylistically, it works best in the chapters where Max is present, watching insects and feeling the presence of everyone who has/ever will live in the flat and seeing Hannah move on in life.

Stylistically, it moves between this and Hannah’s life in late 90’s Australia. And there’s enough bogans, op shops and Anzac biscuits to satisfy nostalgia freaks. Literary readers will enjoy the overarching concept that the eponymous Echoes is the housing estate teenage Hannah lives on, but is also the afterlife that Max lives in and also partially what indigenous Australians call The Dreamtime.

Tonally though, the book seems to suffer from an uneven, emotionally shifting and often jarring tone. It’s meta enough to reference Ghost, Ghostbusters, Truly, Madly, Deeply and Ted Hughes’ poem Anniversary. However, the sly wink of the short story Hannah works on in Uni - resembling Wyld’s best-known novel All The Birds, Singing - seems a little too cute for its own good. See also, Hannah’s mental health crisis portrayed with great dignity, Max’s death played for laughs.

It’s a novel that Sunday supplements will love, but personally, I found it too erratic to be truly beautiful. It’s published by Penguin on August 1st and I thank them for a preview copy. #theechoes.

as a man watches over his love ones in the afterlife, as story is set in a dual timeline. before death and after death.

the descriptive writing of how the afterlife can feel very emotive at times.

i enjoyed how the author explored how max’s girlfriend dealt with grief, whilst also showing the main character looking down on everyone experiencing grief.

this book travels through the girlfriend’s childhood, connecting her memories to her boyfriends death. it can be a bit confusing at times but regardless it’s still an enjoyable read.