'In 1720s Scotland, a priest and his son get lost in the forest, transporting a witch to the coast to stop her from being killed by the village.
'In the sad, slow years after the Second World War, Ruth finds herself the replacement wife to a recent widower and stepmother to his two young boys, installed in a huge house by the sea and haunted by those who have come before.
'Fifty years later, Viv is cataloguing the valuables left in her dead grandmother's seaside home, when she uncovers long-held secrets of the great house.
'Three women, hundreds of years apart, slip into each other's lives in a novel of darkness, violence and madness.' (Publication summary)
'The author’s third novel spans three eras to give voice to the ‘collective grief’ of violence against women. In 2021, it couldn’t be more timely.'
'“If I were a woman I would give men a wide berth.”
'A decent man says this in Evie Wyld’s wondrous and disturbing third novel, “The Bass Rock” — and with good reason. So many other men in the book are far less decent, and all too capable of closing even wide berths.' (Introduction)
'‘Her job, she knew, was to stay still and be petted.’ So thinks Ruth, one of the protagonists of Evie Wyld’s new novel The Bass Rock, as she experiences the uninvited sexual attentions of her husband’s first wife’s father while washing up after a Christmas lunch. Instead of staying still, she dares him to continue, confounding the passive role assigned to her. After he retreats she completes the washing up, then goes into the drawing room and carefully snaps the head off an expensive mantelpiece ornament that had been a wedding present. ‘It made a satisfying noise, but nothing loud enough to arouse suspicion next door, and she took the two pieces and wrapped them in a bit of old newsprint from the coal box, placed it on the hearth and stamped on it with the heel of her shoe.’ That night, when she tells her husband what had happened in the kitchen, he refuses to believe her, instead contemptuously labelling her a self-regarding fantasist.' (Introduction)
'The Bass Rock opens with a memory, or a dream, where six-year-old Vivianne, whose adult self is one of the narrators of the novel proper, discovers a woman’s body in a suitcase, washed up on the beach near her grandmother’s house. The memory is important, not only because it is a formative experience for Vivianne and one that haunts her adult life, but also because it sets up The Bass Rock’s central concern: this is a novel about the centuries-long history of violence committed against women, and the legacies this might leave.' (Introduction)
'Evie Wyld won the Miles Franklin Award for her last novel, All the Birds, Singing. Her latest, set on the coast of Scotland, contains both beauty and violence.'
'In the Firth of Forth in Scotland’s east, a hulking lump of volcanic rock rises steeply from the water, an “igneous intrusion”. Known as Bass Rock, it’s the kind of geological anomaly that inspires anthropomorphizing. It menaces; it waits. In Evie Wyld’s new novel, The Bass Rock, the guano-white monolith has watched on for centuries as women have come to harm, murdered under its imperious shadow. It feels as if some dark power is loose – a vicious bedevilment – but Wyld’s point is far more terrifying: the rock has simply borne witness to ordinary life.' (Introduction)
'“If I were a woman I would give men a wide berth.”
'A decent man says this in Evie Wyld’s wondrous and disturbing third novel, “The Bass Rock” — and with good reason. So many other men in the book are far less decent, and all too capable of closing even wide berths.' (Introduction)
'The author’s third novel spans three eras to give voice to the ‘collective grief’ of violence against women. In 2021, it couldn’t be more timely.'
