The Echoes

A Novel

Author Evie Wyld
Hardcover
$28.00 US
0"W x 0"H x 0"D   | 17 oz | 12 per carton
On sale Feb 18, 2025 | 304 Pages | 9781101871904
From the award-winning novelist, a ravishing new novel set between London and rural Australia, both a love story and a ghost story.

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he is still here, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the apartment they shared and begins to realize how much of her life was invisible to him.

In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah was haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seemed to offer the potential of a fresh new chapter, but the past refused to stay hidden. It found expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, motherhood and sisterhood, secrets and who has the right to reveal them—what of our past can be cast away and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.
© Urszula Soltys

EVIE WYLD’s debut novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature, and it was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for Best Novel. In 2013 she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Her latest novel, The Bass Rock, won the Stella Prize. She lives in London.

View titles by Evie Wyld
“Wyld has always been in a category of her own, but 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.” ―Alex Preston, The Observer (Fiction to look out for in 2024)

“Unsettling, vivid, and beautifully written.” ―Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

The Echoes is a gorgeous, wise, furious meditation on the ways in which we carry both love and pain across decades and hemispheres. Each new layer is a revelation of compassion and understanding. Wyld is brilliant on girlhood, on grief, on intimacy’s terrible costs and its funny, messy grace. This is a jewel of a novel.” ―Fiona McFarlane, author of The Night Guest

“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 Constellations

“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, Booker Prize–winning author of The Gathering

“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, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

“A strange and wondrous novel, my book of the year by a mile. Wyld is a literary magician, doing more in the space of a few pages than many authors manage over the course of their careers.” —Alex Preston, author of In Love and War
 
“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

“I loved this book. Evie Wyld moves effortlessly through times, places and people with a relentless, brutal, compassionate attention. I am in awe of her control over detail, emotion, and plot—and the way she shows us how we understand the personal through the local and the historical.” —Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted: A Love Story

“A brilliant, satisfying novel that explores flinty and essential truths about love and loss. Full of complex, believable characters and grounded in the mysteries and frustrations of the living and the dead. Flawlessly written, intriguing and ambitious. It moved me very much.” —Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

About

From the award-winning novelist, a ravishing new novel set between London and rural Australia, both a love story and a ghost story.

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he is still here, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the apartment they shared and begins to realize how much of her life was invisible to him.

In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah was haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seemed to offer the potential of a fresh new chapter, but the past refused to stay hidden. It found expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, motherhood and sisterhood, secrets and who has the right to reveal them—what of our past can be cast away and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.

Creators

© Urszula Soltys

EVIE WYLD’s debut novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature, and it was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for Best Novel. In 2013 she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Her latest novel, The Bass Rock, won the Stella Prize. She lives in London.

View titles by Evie Wyld

Praise

“Wyld has always been in a category of her own, but 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.” ―Alex Preston, The Observer (Fiction to look out for in 2024)

“Unsettling, vivid, and beautifully written.” ―Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

The Echoes is a gorgeous, wise, furious meditation on the ways in which we carry both love and pain across decades and hemispheres. Each new layer is a revelation of compassion and understanding. Wyld is brilliant on girlhood, on grief, on intimacy’s terrible costs and its funny, messy grace. This is a jewel of a novel.” ―Fiona McFarlane, author of The Night Guest

“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 Constellations

“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, Booker Prize–winning author of The Gathering

“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, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

“A strange and wondrous novel, my book of the year by a mile. Wyld is a literary magician, doing more in the space of a few pages than many authors manage over the course of their careers.” —Alex Preston, author of In Love and War
 
“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

“I loved this book. Evie Wyld moves effortlessly through times, places and people with a relentless, brutal, compassionate attention. I am in awe of her control over detail, emotion, and plot—and the way she shows us how we understand the personal through the local and the historical.” —Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted: A Love Story

“A brilliant, satisfying novel that explores flinty and essential truths about love and loss. Full of complex, believable characters and grounded in the mysteries and frustrations of the living and the dead. Flawlessly written, intriguing and ambitious. It moved me very much.” —Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti