The Echoes

Title: The Echoes
Author: Evie Wyld
Publisher: Vintage

Shortlist: Fiction

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he 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 an autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them. It asks what of our past we can shrug off and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.

Judges’ report

Wyld again proves her genius at crafting a story that explores the long shadows that past behaviours cast on the present, this time via a couple in London, Hannah and Max, and Hannah’s choice to secretly seek an abortion in order to sever her bloodline marred by violence, abuse and damage. The genesis of Hannah's Australian family slowly reveals itself in this captivating and chilling novel, canvassing how brutal family histories impact descendants across decades. Written with Wyld’s trademark emotional perceptivity and incisive eye for the merciless ramifications of class structures, this is a story of fragile ghosts and aching real lives, executed with passion.

Extract

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VPLA book photography by Sarah Walker