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The Echoes

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The Echoes

By: Evie Wyld
Narrated by: Vivien Carter, Sebastian Humphreys
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died.

As a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, Max 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 autopsy of a relationship, The Echoes is a novel about stories and who has the right to tell them, asking what of our past can we shrug off and what is fixed forever.

'A book that will stay with you forever' OBSERVER
'Sharp prose weaving intergenerational trauma and a ghost story' SINÉAD GLEESON
'It takes brilliance to leap into the darkness' ANNE ENRIGHT
'My favourite Wyld novel' PAULA HAWKINS

© Evie Wyld 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

 Genre Fiction Ghosts Horror Literary Fiction Psychological Haunted

Critic reviews

The Echoes 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
Precise and unforgiving… 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… Nobody writes about trauma like Wyld
This is stranger, darker and more brilliant than anything she’s written before… This is a book that will stay with you for ever – both intimate and extraordinarily ambitious
The wit of Evie Wyld is on sparkling display in the first line of her unsettling fourth novel… compulsively readable… Wyld is an uncommonly sensorial writer, relentless in the ways that she captures the bodily disgust of abusive behaviour and the burning desire to break its hereditary cycle
It takes brilliance and verve to leap into the darkness as Evie Wyld does here. What a discovery - this is the first book of her books I have read; it will certainly not be the last (Anne Enright, author of The Wren, The Wren)
Unsettling, vivid, and beautifully written (Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground)
A stunning, immersive work of sharp prose, weaving intergenerational trauma and a ghost story and the complexities of love and families. Wyld gets better with each novel (Sinéad Gleeson, author of Hagstone)
I’ve loved all of Evie Wyld’s novels, but I think this may be my favourite. Like all the best ghost stories, The Echoes is also a love story. It’s funny and moving and has such intelligent things to say about family, about shared histories and grief and the ways people find to heal themselves (Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train)
A story about humans as they are - complicated bundles of pain, love, cruelty, cowardice, tenderness, bravery, loyalty. When the world is encouraging us to see each other as one dimensional, complex characters like those in The Echoes are necessary. And on top of all that Wyld is funny (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You)
Evie Wyld is a true powerhouse, her latest novel The Echoes is unflinching in its exploration of loss, grief, historical trauma and complex relationships and families. This is an utterly compelling, vivid and powerful novel, it contains courageous love and truth, stunning fearless writing, outstanding story telling and a tremendous intimacy, this book holds a voice that sings and stays with you, haunting you, long after you have read the last page (Salena Godden, Mrs Death Misses Death)
All stars
Most relevant
Beautifully written novel about stories, silence and ghosts. So many themes and ideas, such rich prose, but all handled with such a light touch and a load of humour.

Superb storytelling

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Interesting premise though the addition of the spirit of the departed didn’t add much to the story, which would have been fine without it. The female narrator sounded as though she didn’t know where a sentence was going – she consistently put the emphasis on the wrong words in the phrase, leading to which made listening a bit trying by interrupting the flow. Good characters. Questions remain about what actually happened and how everything was resolved. Unless I missed that bit.

Let down by the (female) narrator

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I’d never heard of the award-winning Australian writer Evie Wyld before noting a Guardian recommendation. I’ll definitely be back for more – I loved it! It’s SO unusual: tragi-funny, shocking, witty-sharp, heart-breaking, powerfully positive, honest but non-judgemental, resonating, intensely alive and linguistically and stylistically adventurous!

Hannah and Max have been together for six years living in London where Max is a creative writing teacher and Hannah has left behind a troubled past in Australia which she keeps well under wraps. They have reached that stage: should they get married? Should they have children? That the book begins with Hannah recovering from a termination which she has had without telling Max sets off this dislocated and fragmented novel. Through twists and turns the narratives of Hannah and Max alternate, delving more and more deeply into each of them. Vivien Carter and Sebastian Humphreys, the two narrators, add to the listening enjoyment, both of them absolutely in tune with their characters.

The Echoes of the tile is the area of Australia where Hannah endured her childhood, but more importantly they are the inescapable repercussions of those years of her unfeasibly dysfunctional family. Uncle Tone’s treatment of her sister Rachel on the struggling family’s goat farm is just one of many strands of the resounding echoes , unresolved in Hannah’s life in London. (Incidentally, if your Christmas dinner guests didn’t gel as well as you had hoped, wait till you witness the culture clash in Max and Hannah’s London flat. We’ve all been there!)

The novels’ structure across continents and decades is assured and satisfying, and includes an idea which just shouldn’t work. Max dies partway through and his narration becomes spectral, allowing him to analyse the relationship between him and Hannah from his point of view, and to observe her life without him from above. I’m not a supernatural fan, but against all odds. this works brilliantly!

I loved it!

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Wanted to like it more than I did, found it difficult to follow, maybe that’s just me. Found myself not understanding the story frequently. Despite this I really liked the authors ability to pin point day-to-day happenings and moments into words, things you never usually think about, so when you hear them noted down it resonates with you.

The writing

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if only the story in Australia had been as compulsive as the ghost story, still good overall.

Brilliant ending!

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