Review: The Echoes - Evie Wyld

Genre: Literary Fiction Published: Jonathan Cape, August 2024 My Rating: 4/5 stars

"The Echoes. His parents thought it was a good name when they moved there, took up all those acres. They thought it represented the countryside, empty and huge, and how their teaching, their edification would continue on into the future. But in reality it made a person think of ghosts."

The Story:

“I do not believe in ghosts, which, since my death, has become somewhat of a problem”.

So opens the story of Max, a man who finds himself a reluctant ghost haunting the flat he shared with his girlfriend in the months leading up to his death.

Looking down from between the dust-laden top-shelves, among the moths and spiders, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief 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. Through a series of memories and flashbacks, we see the untold stories of her family that broke them apart and led her to London and to Max.

What I loved:

Even thought none of her books have clicked with me in such a way that I’ve given them 5-stars, it stands beyond doubt for me that Wyld is a brilliant author. Her technical skill, her eye for small details to convey complex and layered backstories, and the clear intention she has for her stories; all of these skills are at full display in The Echoes.

My favourite element by far is the novels structure. The chapters bounce back and forth between past and present in a fixed rhythm (present, past, past, distant past). With its format, it brilliantly mirrors the themes of “echoes” at its core. In a lesser authors hands, this might come off as gimmicky, but Wyld preserves the natural flow of the novel so well that the format almost feels inevitable.

The story and themes that The Echoes tackles are heavy. Almost crushingly so, at times. Yet Wyld balances this out with these small moments of levity and humor (mostly through Max’s ghostly attempts to interact with the real world). Don’t get me wrong: there are no laugh-out-loud or slapstick-comedy moments here. That would undercut the seriousness of the rest of the novel. Instead, these moments are heartfelt, tender and beyond their surface-level comedy a bit sad too. Take Max’s interactions with Cotton, the new cat that Hannah gets after his passing; on the surface they’re relatable and endearing. If you’ve ever had a “dad-and-the-dog” situation (either with dog or cat), you’ll know these moments. Then, often with a single line, Wyld reminds you of what she’s actually showing you: a man desperately trying to interact with his family after passing, and ultimately never getting through to them in the way he wants…

What I didn’t love:

Unfortunately, these moments were in the minority when it came to Max’s page time, and his character ultimately the biggest issue I found with the novel. Despite what the synopsis might have you believe, The Echoes is Hannah’s story. Every interaction and revelation Max has as a ghost is about her, every flashback is about her, and hers is the only character that gets any level of layering in the book. Max is left by the wayside, despite having the most “pov-time”. It paints him as an empty shell of a character; a Gary-Stu who had no life or goals beyond his girlfriend. The fact that his afterlife revolves completely around her feels unbelievable to me.

This got me thinking of Evie Wyld’s other novels. Similarly to The Bass Rock and All the Birds Singing, there are clear feminist tones in The Echoes. Wyld enjoys telling female stories. Unfortunately, all three of them suffer from the problem where the don’t pass the “reverse-Bechdel-test”; they don’t have any significant/well developed male characters in them. When you make your “protagonist” a male, this becomes a problem.

Because of the lack of development in Max, I had a difficult time truly caring about their relationship and one of the major storylines lost its impact on me.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.