The Echoes: A Novel
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 an autopsy of a relationship, and 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.
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 an autopsy of a relationship, and 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.
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Community Reviews
There are three main periods:
After: As told by Max who doesn't believe in ghosts, but who describes himself as "a transparent central nervous system" floating around the flat which he had shared with his girlfriend, Hannah;
Before: In which we gradually learn about the relationship and experiences that Max and Hannah shared together in that flat; and
Then: Which takes us back to Hannah's birth country, Australia.
Although I found the switches in time frustrating at first, I soon realised that they were a very effective way of piecing together the complicated and challenging histories of the main characters, particularly Hannah and how she was shaped by her past.
I would have liked to get to know more about Hannah's life after Max's death and prior to her impending demise. How did she get 'it' together?
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