After the Fire, A Still Small Voice
After the Fire, A Still Small Voice is the debut novel by author Evie Wyld published in August 2009 by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Pantheon Books in the US.[1] It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize[2] and a Betty Trask Award.[3] and was also shortlisted for both the Orange Award for New Writers[4] and International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.[5] The book's title is taken from 1 Kings 19:12.[6]
Plot introduction
The story is set in Queensland[7] on the East Coast of Australia and concerns two men from different generations, as described in the blurb on the back cover of the 2010 Vintage edition :-
- 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 neighbours 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.
Reception
- Lee Rourke in The Independent on Sunday rounds off his review saying "Wyld's writing is assured enough to elongate metaphor and symbolism, creating a novel both taut and otherworldly. This adroit examination of loss, lostness and trauma is the beginning of great things".[8]
- The Observer has the following praise from Francesca Segal, "The landscape of Australia's east coast looms large in the book, wild and sinister, filled with light and tragedy. This is a sad and lovely novel from a talented new writer".[7]
- In The Daily Mail, Stephanie Cross writes "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 of the finest storytellers working today. On this evidence, Wyld can match them both".[9]
References
External links