The Echoes by Evie Wyld
The Echoes is Evie Wyld’s fourth novel. An award-winning author from Australia living in London, Wyld was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. The Echoes is a brilliant novel that examines past trauma – both personal and collective -- and the reverberations that echo through future generations.
Like puzzle pieces that eventually reveal a whole, the novel’s chapters, alternately titled After, Before, and Then, are interspersed with narratives from supporting characters to fill in the gaps. Though confusing at first, once you get into the rhythm of the repetition, you’ll move seamlessly from one chapter to the next. The novel covers much in its brevity; in 225 pages, Wyld unfolds the trauma experienced by protagonist Hannah and four generations of her family and juxtaposes it against the trauma inflicted upon Aboriginal children taken from their families and put into boarding schools, land on which Hannah grew up.
The After chapters are told from the perspective of Hannah’s boyfriend Max who we learn in the first sentence has died and is living as a ghost in the flat they share in London.
“I do not believe in ghosts, which, since my death, has become something of a problem.”
He wants desperately to understand the mystery of Hannah – why she doesn’t want him to meet her family (they’re boring, she says) and her inner wound that displays itself in very outwardly destructive behaviors.
The Before chapters tell the story of Hannah and Max’s relationship. Max is a writing teacher and Hannah is a barkeep. They’ve been together for six years and it seems that marriage would be the next step, and they both wonder why they haven’t moved in that direction.
Readers will come to understand Hannah’s propensity for secret keeping long before Max does – keeping from him both her past and the abortion she has shortly before he dies. In the Then chapters readers learn the story of Hannah and her sister Rachel growing up in Australia on a goat farm on land called The Echoes that abuts the former Aboriginal school, their mother’s and uncle’s abusive upbringing, and eventually their grandmother’s story that sets the tragic backdrop for future generations.
Though a dark novel, there are moments of comedy. Max, is learning to use his ghostly form to let Hannah know he is with her in the flat, and though he has perfected moving the cat, pushing till it yowls and interrupts an intimate moment between Hannah and their longtime friend Simon, we’re reminded that Max has no arms to hold Hannah, no tear ducts to cry when she is hurting, and no heart to be broken when he learns the sad truth about the baby they will never have.
In an author note at the end of the novel, Wyld recounts the history of the Aboriginal children forcibly taken from their families, put into ‘schools’ and stripped of their names, culture, and identity. In Australia, she writes, there are more than 17,000 Stolen Generations survivors. Trauma reverberating like an echo throughout future generations.
A stunning work of fiction that knits together the past and present, personal and historical, with a complex structure, and an unforgettable storyline and characters.
This is Lin Salisbury with Superior Reviews. Listen to my interview with Evie Wyld on February 27 at 7pm on WTIP Radio 90.7 Grand Marais and March 1 at 6am.
