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Imprint: Jonathan Cape
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Published: 26/03/2020
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ISBN: 9781911214397
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Length: 368 Pages
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Dimensions: 222mm x 33mm x 144mm
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Weight: 510g
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RRP: £16.99
‘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
Surging out of the sea, 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, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.
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Imprint: Jonathan Cape
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Published: 26/03/2020
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ISBN: 9781911214397
-
Length: 368 Pages
-
Dimensions: 222mm x 33mm x 144mm
-
Weight: 510g
-
RRP: £16.99
Reviews
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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.
Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times
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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.
Alex Preston, Observer
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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.
Justine Jordan, Guardian
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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.
Francesca Carington, Sunday Telegraph, *Novel of the Week*
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Powerful, intensely absorbing… Wyld is as gifted as Phoebe Waller-Bridge at capturing the hilarious, the excruciating and the absurd.
Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail
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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.
William Boyd, Daily Telegraph
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[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.
Tatler *What to read right now*
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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.
Claire Allfree, Metro
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An implacable witness to centuries of violence… this [is a] spikily beautiful novel.
Siobhan Murphy, The Times
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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.
Catherine Taylor, Financial Times
