I could have read an entire novel dedicated to Max and Hannah’s quotidian life in London — in its best and most lyrical moments, The Echoes documents the messy, divine business of being alive ... Wyld’s sharp story of living doesn’t need traumatic climaxes to make its point. The time to enjoy the love we have is now.
The title of Wyld’s new novel, The Echoes, is presumably meant to sound wistful and haunting. Actually it’s more a case of cacophonic reverb, an untenable proliferation of both narratives and traumas ... Multiple secrets, artificially withheld over hundreds of pages: could there be a cruder way to generate tension? Or a more tiresome objective correlative than the overused self-harm trope? These days characters seem to whip out a razor blade at the first hint of a feeling or a memory. But, as is always the case with Wyld’s novels, some of the writing is genuinely, frustratingly good ... Quite simply, there is far too much going on here for us to get to know the characters well enough to feel for them.
Wyld is particularly good at evoking how quickly a family relationship can shift from respectful to humiliating, mundane to violent, especially when you’re a young woman ... A cleverly crafted novel that has a miraculous density — it feels much longer than it is ... A masterly achievement, a work of skill and subtle empathy that really earns our attention. It will linger with me for a very long time.
Multiple plot lines are managed masterfully as the novel sets up several characters whose stories intersect and strengthen the narrative. It builds slowly to reveal the tragedy at the heart of the book. This latest novel again demonstrates Wyld’s keen interest in secret pasts and traumatic histories.
Wyld’s novels are always structurally intricate, with jumbled timelines and perspectival switches, and this is no different ... A book shaped by the indefinable impact of the past on the present. That theme has become the home turf of literary fiction – the trauma plot – but rarely has it been approached with such clever indirection.
Wyld has always excelled at tension and pace, and the scattered puzzle pieces drop into place with both a feeling of horror and a strange kind of satisfaction ... As well as terror The Echoes is also suffused with love, from the deep bond between Hannah and Rachel to the consoling and celebratory love of female friends, and the imperfect, wavering but ultimately lasting love between Hannah and Max. It is also – and this is important – a deeply funny book.
This novel left me gasping, devastated, and better for it. It is a ghost story – and not just of Max, but also of Hannah, of every character that breathes life into its pages – as Evie Wyld reveals the ghosts of who they could have become, who they once were, who they may yet dare to be. In Wyld’s world, you do not have to be dead to be a ghost, to be an echo. Wyld’s genius is inimitable, heralding a new era of Australian Gothic.
Powerful ... Her signature traits are immediately evident – poetic observations of unusual details; a pervasive sense of grief and palpable trauma, leavened with a wry sense of humour.
While each part is beautifully written, there isn’t always a sense of cohesion between the three ... One can admire a novel and respect its author while simultaneously feeling frustrated by its structure ... Wyld, however, is a skilled writer ... I would have enjoyed it more had the novel displayed more internal cohesion, the sections reflecting and resonating off each other rather than feeling so independent. Those echoes might ultimately have made it more fulfilling.
The name of a place in the novel, but also reflects the echoes of life that stay with us even when we want to leave them behind. It examines the idea of an afterlife as another kind of echo that reverberates and never leaves the last place its life form inhabited. It feels starkly different from other novels that revolve around life after death in the way it examines death’s impact as well as the secrets that stay with us unbidden.
