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Witches, ghosts and feminism: how female authors are rewriting horror fiction

The Bass Rock

‘A modern gothic triumph. Spectacularly well-observed, profoundly disquieting and utterly riveting. Like all Evie Wyld's work it is startlingly insightful about psychological and physical abuse. It is a haunting, masterful novel.’ —Max Porter

Like Ali Smith’s novels crossed with the TV series Fleabag… [The Bass Rock is] a vividly imagined portrait… There’s much to admire in its little miracles of observation… [Evie Wyld] knows how to maintain suspense, what to withhold and when to reveal it — right up to the spine-chilling last line.

A multilayered masterpiece; vivid, chilling, leaping jubilantly through space and time, it’s a jaw dropping novel that confirms Wyld as one of our most gifted young writers.

Wondrous... Expertly chilling... Wyld consistently entertains, juggling the pleasures of several different genres.

Searingly controlled…psychologically fearless and…bitterly funny. Wyld is a genius of contrasting voices and revealed connections, while her foreshadowings are so subtle that the book demands – and eminently repays – a second read.

A rising star of British fiction… Wyld’s slow, controlled build-up of dread is excellent… Most powerful of all is Wyld’s evocation of a hairs-on-the-neck sense of foreboding when women interact with volatile men.

Powerful, intensely absorbing… Wyld is as gifted as Phoebe Waller-Bridge at capturing the hilarious, the excruciating and the absurd.

Evie Wyld’s tremendous new novel, The Bass Rock, is a powerful and beautifully written narrative of male violence and the three women who endured it.

[A] menacing, modern-Gothic novel... Balancing a superbly controlled sense of dread with fierce anger, Wyld's intense novel is one that will get under your skin and stay there.

Evie Wyld is the author of two excellent novels but she moves up a gear with her third… Wyld’s superbly written…stories mirror and haunt each other in shockingly satisfying ways… Each of these separately lonely women are startlingly well drawn, yet the threads running through their lives are universal… The Bass Rock deserves to win prizes.

Evie Wyld's third novel The Bass Rock was...not to be missed, it's as good as her first two excellent novels.

A blazingly angry, darkly witty tour de force... Bracing, and as ever, beautifully written.

An implacable witness to centuries of violence… this [is a] spikily beautiful novel.

Wyld is unhesitatingly brave in her writing… She has an instinctive understanding of the interchangeability between humans and nature that can border, thrillingly, on animism… Wyld’s delineation of the era is cut-glass perfect… Her prose shines, even as it devours.

[A] menacing, modern-Gothic novel…Balancing a superbly controlled sense of dread with fierce anger, Wyld’s intense novel is one that will get under your skin and stay there.

[An] unsettling new novel about toxic masculinity… Wyld’s gossamer-light prose, beautiful even in its depiction of murder, brings nuance and complexity to the story… Wyld’s skilfully woven narrative will keep you turning towards a final, unexpected twist.

Quite remarkable… This book is equally ingenious [as her previous novels], if not more so… With each novel, Wyld gets better and better… A serious, serious writer.

Powerful… unsettling… humorous and full of sharply observed vignettes.

The Bass Rock is a gripping, moving insight into the age-old issue of toxic masculinity and the sixth sense that women have evolved to keep them safe.

Evie Wyld’s powerful new novel…[is] a feminine counterforce to the masculine violence that pulses viscerally throughout… No wonder Wyld’s rage erupts from the page as she bears witness to the women who fail to survive and searches for ways that others might.

Evie Wyld is one of our most exciting young writers and her latest book is being touted as her breakthrough. An epic novel.

Evie Wyld…[is] one of our most distinctive and vital voices.

Daily Mail, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*

Wyld is the most stupendous of writers, daring, heartfelt, explosive. The Bass Rock reminds us of all her power and brilliance, it thrums with an anger it is impossible not to feel.

The Bass Rock is a multi-generational modern gothic triumph. It is spectacularly well-observed, profoundly disquieting and utterly riveting. Like all Evie Wyld's work it is startlingly insightful about psychological and physical abuse. It is a haunting, masterful novel.

A brutal portrait of male violence, as unchanging down the centuries as the coastal rock of the title… Cleverly constructed, full of electric scene-making, and harnessing an eerie energy…the novel ends in hope.

Everything [Evie Wyld] has published has left me excited and slightly (very) envious of her ability… And then came The Bass Rock… Something extremely special… The book takes on an immense power. This is the best book of the #MeToo era… An absolute blinder.

Vividly told and compelling… The Bass Rock is…beautifully written and powered by blistering force and righteous anger.

Evie Wyld is exceptionally good at the gruesome… Her bewitching third novel…The Bass Rock is beautifully written and its particular brand of macabre is all Evie Wyld’s own. The tension, foreboding and sense of inevitability are hard to shake off, even once the final page is turned. Its atmosphere is so powerful that you feel you need to go for a walk afterwards.

A dark, gristly marvel of a novel. The Bass Rock held me in thrall from cover to cover. Evie Wyld is a gothic genius: her narrative of the violence inflicted on women throughout the centuries and the seething, female anger left in its wake left me with a deep sense of disquiet that will doubtless remain for years to come.

A fierce novel exploring the subjugation of – and violence against – women through the ages.

I savoured this wonderful novel; it is so extraordinarily clear-eyed and vivid, sharply disturbing yet deeply compassionate. What an amazing achievement.

Wonderfully subtle and magnificently savage.

Evie Wyld's vivid, visceral writing has long been in a class of its own – and as beautiful as it is terrifying, as moral as it is furious, The Bass Rock is her at her unflinching best.

Amazingly good. The Bass Rock will fill the air around you with angry ghosts and you will be glad in their company.

Wyld’s The Bass Rock is her third novel and best so far… this is Wyld’s masterpiece – as majestic and monumental as the landmark it’s named after.

Observer, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*

A bewitching and atmospheric novel, laced with dread. It reveals the haunted house of society, with its echoes of damaged and extinguished lives, but is also illuminated by beautiful observation about people, and their capacity for both violence and empathy.

I loved The Bass Rock and found it menacing, sophisticated, magical and also very funny – the best book yet by a wonderful writer.

Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock sounds fascinating… Wyld has a luminous prose style, and to see how she copes with 300 years and Scottish doubleness (or tripleness) is high on my list of “to reads”.

Beautifully written, [The Bass Rock] is a reminder of female folklore and the power of giving words to women.

Stylist *10 glorious new books to buy this March*

Ambitious in scope… The physical atmosphere of the Bass Rock and its surroundings are wonderfully evoked… But it is the relationships between women in this tessellated work that triumph... I wholly recommend this book.

Wyld is often praised for her lyrical prose, and The Bass Rock is most certainly a continuation of this form.

[A] dark, beautiful and funny gothic family saga for the #MeToo generation… an atmospheric book that transports you within a few sentences… The tension is always building as the story takes on an otherworldly dimension.

The Bass Rock is complex, rich, challenging… Like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, The Bass Rock offers a universal history of subjugation and oppression… Violence…runs through the book like veins in marble… Vivid and gripping.

A gripping look at three women's stories across four centuries.

Evie Wyld’s passion for horror shines through in the setting of this novel.

Utterly enthralling… [Wyld’s] eye for human foibles and idiosyncrasy is incredibly sharp, and this novel once again exhibits her bravura way with narrative structure… Dark, disturbing and very sophisticated.

[An] intensely absorbing gothic novel, which weaves together the fate of three women across three centuries. That it can also comfortably accommodate episodes of off-the-wall, Fleabag-esque hilarity confirms the acclaimed Wyld's brilliance.

Wyld's thought-provoking plots separate this book from many others on the shelves... Wyld's three narratives are artfully crafted to suit the shifting time frames.

Wyld's ingeniously linked narratives weave a haunting tale of fear and defiance.

'A modern gothic triumph' Max Porter 
 
The Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other. 
 
In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life. 
 
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community. 
 
Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth's belongings and discovers her place in the past - and perhaps a way forward. 
 
Each woman's choices are circumscribed by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life... 
 
WINNER OF THE STELLA PRIZE 
_______________ 
 
PRAISE FOR THE BASS ROCK: 
'Daring, heartfelt, explosive' Daisy Johnson 
'A vividly imagined portrait' Sunday Times 
'Dark, disturbing and very sophisticated' William Boyd 
'Wonderfully subtle and magnificently savage' Claire Fuller

Everything is Teeth

An intimate and unique visual memoir by the multi-prizewinning Evie Wyld

A visual memoir with beautifully drawn illustrations by Joe Sumner.

Its minute observations and most unsettling moments stayed with me, like a shark tooth kept in a pocket, a souvenir of someone else’s life.

It is remarkable how an autobiographical – I stress this – book can enact a movement away from the self and become the repository of so much humility.

Wyld tells the story of her obsession and fascination with the shark, and charts the undercurrents, tensions and joys of family life. Model-maker Joe Sumner’s illustrations, full of tension and grace, are a haunting accompaniment.

Sumner’s wondrous art is a perfect visual correlative to Wyld’s spare lyricism.

The perfect marriage of sparse but beautiful prose with elegant and effective imagery.

Wyld … uses her signature oblique style to excellent effect in conjuring up a child’s world of everyday nightmares.

If you have never read a graphic novel before, this powerful and moving example is the perfect place to start.

Sumner’s illustrations are an evocative accompaniment to this melancholy, funny, moving tale.

Lyrically written, […] Sumner’s artwork complements Wyld’s restrained style beautifully.

Here’s hoping Father Christmas is an Observer reader and buys it for me.

A testament to the mind of a child and how it survives the world around it and a remarkable comic book in tapping into that transformative experience.

Evie Wyld was a girl obsessed with sharks. Spending summers in the brutal heat of coastal New South Wales, she fell for the creatures. Their teeth, their skin, their eyes; their hunters and their victims. 
 
Everything is Teeth is a delicate and intimate collection of the memories she brought home to England, a book about family, love and the irresistible forces that pass through life unseen, under the surface, ready to emerge at any point.

All the Birds, Singing

The highly acclaimed second novel from the award-winning novelist Evie Wyld, named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. 
 
Winner of the Miles Franklin Award 
Winner of the Encore Award 
Winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize 
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 
Longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction

Unsettling, dark and extraordinarily fresh. It feels eccentrically, wonderfully  British…  An inimitable, original new voice. Can’t wait to read more.

Wyld is a writer who reconfigures the conventions of storytelling with a sure-footedness and ambition which belie her age... What makes the book so outstanding is the beauty and simplicity of the writing.

One feels the influence of an early Ian McEwan or Iain Banks… But All the Birds, Singing, is also powerfully original, strongest in its handling of the human and animal worlds, and the thin line between the two.

All The Birds, Singing is extraordinarily accomplished, one of those books that tears around in your cerebellum like a dark firework, and which, upon finishing, you immediately want to pick up again

The closest cousin to All the Birds, Singing is Iain Banks' masterly first novel, The Wasp Factory… Evie Wyld's two books are quite as good as Ian McEwan's early fiction. Expect to hear her name often from now on.

Her  writing is precise, intense, haunting and poetic… A nuanced exploration of human  suffering and resilience. Wyld’s writing seems to come from somewhere  deep; somewhere a little big unnerving and odd. For once, the hype  matches the talent.

Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing is an astonishing novel … The story is compelling, the structure ambitious and the imagery vivid. This is one talented young writer.

Oozes, drips and throbs with menace… A thoughtful and intense account of a young woman seemingly determined to disappear from the world’s radar… All the Birds, Singing should enhance [Wyld's] reputation as one of our most gifted novelists.

A  hair-prickling thriller… It's the quality of [Wyld's] prose that really blows your mind.

Unsettling, beautiful, horrifying and moving in equal parts, I haven't read anything quite like All the Birds, Singing for a long time… An extraordinary book.

A voice indebted to Banks and every bit as compelling.

Some novels are crafted with such care that it seems a shame reviewers should get to paw them before readers have the chance to admire their intricacy... Ingeniously constructed narrative.

Wyld's writing...is exquisite. An unusual novel that should win its author even more prizes.

There  is a fantastically handled creeping dread to the narrative flow… The ambiguity of Jake's story and her  history are played with brilliantly throughout, making this an eerie,  creepy kind of existential thriller.

Tim Winton [is] a writer with whom the fearless Wyld deserves serious comparison.

Completely and utterly monumental. Powerful and beautiful written... I was a fan of Evie Wyld beforehand and this is such a leap forwards. An important book.

Thriller, beast-fable and fantasy, Evie Wyld’s second novel is a sparky, dark yarn set in a  georgic world of sheep husbandry where things have gone spectacularly awry.

In  a sense, this is a tale of possible love and redemption, at once energetic and dark. In another sense, it is a book about summary justice and suspicion, which we readers have been indulging in too… Clever and  very unexpected indeed.

A story that asks darkly whether we can rid ourselves of our past.

Wyld has a skill for creating flawed characters you can’t help but root for.

This is a wonderfully atmospheric novel with a gripping narrative that keeps the reader on edge all the way through.

A dark, powerfully disturbing and beautifully observed story about a haunting, both physical and temporal.

Evie Wyld merges into her mysterious tale of a lonely shepherdess a savage Australian back-story that lends a haunting extra dimension to a novel of troubling beauty.

All the Birds, Singing is a gracefully written, absorbing thriller from a new literary talent.

A hair-pricking rural thriller that confirms the talents of a thrilling prose stylist.

I’ve never taught a creative writing course, but if I did I’d certainly introduce my would-be students to Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing... Written in the future tense, the book has an ending of extraordinary pathos and beauty.

This is a powerful, gritty, strong story of suffering and survival... It is quality stuff, stunning.

A wonderfully atmospheric novel with a gripping narrative.

Precise, intense, haunting and poetic… This is a subtle exploration of suffering and resilience and, for once, the hype matches the talent.

Wyld uses language that is purely gorgeous, even – perhaps especially – when underscoring dread.

A tough and tender take on suffering and redemption.

A compelling, tense novel that lingers with the reader long after it has been finished

With beautiful writing, it is a compelling, rather dark story which makes you laugh and cry

I am obsessed with it, and with what Wyld is going to do next

Jake Whyte is the sole resident of an old farmhouse on an unnamed British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. It’s just her, her untamed companion, Dog, and a flock of sheep. Which is how she wanted it to be. But something is coming for the sheep – every few nights it picks one off, leaves it in rags. 
 
It could be anything. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumours of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is Jake’s unknown past, perhaps breaking into the present, a story hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, in a landscape of different colour and sound, a story held in the scars that stripe her back. 
 
Winner of the Miles Franklin Award 
Winner of the Encore Award 
Winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize 
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 
Longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction

After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

A beautiful debut novel about fathers and sons, and the things we struggle to say out loud by one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2013.

Just sometimes, a book is so complete, so compelling and potent, that you are fearful of breaking its hold. This is one: a novel about (as its title might suggest) devastating damage and the humanity that, almost unfathomably, remains...with awesome skill and whiplash wit, Evie Wyld knits together past and present, with tension building all the time. In Peter Carey and Tim Winton, Australia has produced two if the finest storytellers working today. On this evidence, Wyld can match them both

Wyld sympathetically explores the blight of war and violence on three generations of a working-class Australian family

Wyld's first novel is a remarkable  achievement: a potent and compelling exploration of the connections between father and son, and the legacy of violence and repression

Wyld has a feel for beauty and for the ugliness of inherited pain

Filled with light and tragedy. This is a sad novel and lovely novel from a talented new writer

It's a cauterising, cleansing tale, told with muscular writing

A stunning work from a brilliant new voice

This adroit examination of loss, lostness and trauma is the beginning of great things

Written in a pitchy, crystal-sharp prose, this is a compelling read that uses the Australian landscape to mirror its characters' equally unforgiving emotional terrain

Manages to create a confidently uneasy and gripping atmosphere

It is every inch the assured and stunning debut that everyone suggests

Wyld is a languorous writer with great skill in characterisation...will delight

This is a young writer with talent to burn

Told with quiet, characterful poise, the noel succeeds in evoking not only Australia's epic geographical landscape, but its literary terrain too summoning echoes of some of that country's finest writers,

This is a highly accomplished first novel. Evie Wyld is not a show off writer. She has a clean, clear prose style which is exactly right in the service if her story, and the best ear for dialogue in a long time.

Wyld's debut novel dissects the misery that seeps inexorably from one generation to the next

Wyld can write very well, in a vivid descriptive style reminiscent of Tim Winton's.

Wyld's superb skills at portraying a hot, dusty landscape and her psychological insight will pull you inexorably in.

Superb assured first novel about fathers and sons. Pitch-perfect prose

A very impressive first novel. Wise and wry, it uses its Australian bush setting to great effect, Wyld's protagonists fleeing there from wars, both literal and familial. She writes great characters and makes you love them as she nails them.

This is a sad yet beautiful story of fathers and sons, their wars and the things they will never know about each other

Frank and Leon are two men from different times, discovering that sometimes all you learn from your parents' mistakes is how to make different ones of your own. 
 
Frank is trying to escape his troubled past by running away to his family's beach shack. As he struggles to make friends with his neighbors and their precocious young daughter, Sal, he discovers the community has fresh wounds of its own. A girl is missing, and when Sal too disappears, suspicion falls on Frank. 
 
Decades earlier, Leon tries to hold together his family's cake shop as their suburban life crumbles in the aftermath of the Korean War. When war breaks out again, Leon must go from sculpting sugar figurines to killing young men as a conscript in the Vietnam War.

Evie Wyld

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

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

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

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 A Kind of Intimacy

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

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

Evie Wyld has invented a whole new genre with The Echoes – it’s a horror where the horror isn’t in the paranormal but the everyday. All the anxiety and fear come from humans, and the lightness from a ghost. Beautiful

I absolutely devoured this…. Astonishing in the way it traces the echoes of hurt through generations of a family

A book that’ll quite literally haunt you. It is a book about love, grief and how history and our own personal histories shape us and those around us. It is also a book about the things and spaces we leave behind us in other peoples lives, whether we were a footnote, a dedication, an acknowledgement or maybe a chapter or more

Wyld does a lot of work in just over 200 pages… [the trauma plot] has become the home turf of literary fiction…but rarely has it been approached with such clever indirection

Written in an intriguing style that keeps you turning page after page… an enjoyable read

Powerful… In this gripping, upsetting but ultimately hopeful novel, Wyld’s voice rings true

This is an electrifying, moving, occasionally mordantly funny novel that coolly exhumes the darkness of its character’ troubled heats

Precise and evocative… The sections narrated by Max’s phantom are particularly enjoyable and lyrical… The Echoes is well written and affecting

Humour and tenderness lift an ambitious investigation into hidden trauma

Exquisite… The Echoes is an ambitious, often courageous novel in fractal form; voicing the harm that echoes through generations

Staggeringly good, a high-wire act of precision and control, full of vivid imagery and lightly worn psychological insight

As always from Wyld, this is an electrifying and pitch-perfect performance

Evie Wyld’s spiky, unconventional ghost story channelling family trauma and conflicted love, The Echoes, confirms her as a major talent

There is no better storyteller writing fiction in Britain today. The Echoes is everything you’d hope an Evie Wyld novel to be: humane, ambitious, innovating, captivating, funny, clever with never, ever a hint of pretension

Wyld… [is] really one of the best; a writer who consistently circles ideas of home and belonging in her work, yet always from a new and interesting angle

The Echoes… interweaving of historical threads will come as no surprise to those familiar with Evie Wyld… she has demonstrated a fine sense of pace and tone, and she’s meticulous in her craft

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. 
 
'A masterly achievement' SUNDAY TIMES 
'A book that will stay with you forever' OBSERVER 
'Precise and unforgiving' GUARDIAN 
'Compulsively readable' FINANCIAL TIMES 
'It takes brilliance to leap into the darkness' ANNE ENRIGHT 
'My favourite Wyld novel' PAULA HAWKINS 
 
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.

Evie Wyld

Books by Evie Wyld

Articles featuring Evie Wyld

Witches, ghosts and feminism: how female authors are rewriting horror fiction

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