Cirrus@Austlit

'This novel explodes into life with one of the most arresting openings since Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love. A girl is stoned to death. In many respects it is unlike McEwan’s description of a man falling to his death: the shock is not wrung out in the same slow motion; it is not, primarily, a narrative about the slippery nature of knowledge, ambiguity, responsibility. Instead it is a stark and unambiguous depiction of human brutality towards the despised, the utter failure of empathy. But the same generative power is there. The image sets a course, and a tone, for the rest of the book.' (Introduction)

'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)