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The Bass Rock

The Bass Rock

‘A rising star of British fiction’ Sunday Telegraph

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The lives of three women weave together across four centuries in the dazzling new book from Evie Wyld, a Granta Best of Young British Novelist

Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries borne witness to the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries, the fates of three women are inextricably linked to this place and to each other.

Sarah, accused of being a witch, is fleeing for her life.

Ruth, in the aftermath of the Second World War, is navigating a new marriage and the strange waters of the local community.

Six decades later, Viv, still mourning the death of her father, is cataloguing Ruth’s belongings in the now-empty house.

As each woman’s story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that their choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men who seek to control them. But in sisterhood there is also the possibility of survival and a new way of life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and heart – a devastating indictment of the violence that men have inflicted on women throughout the ages.

© Evie Wyld 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Reviews

  • 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

About the author

Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld is the award-winning author of four novels and one graphic novel. She has won the Betty Trask Award, Miles Franklin Award, John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Encore Award, Jerwood Fiction Prize and the European Union Prize. In 2013 she was included in Granta’s once-a-decade list of Best of Young British Novelists. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and helps run an independent bookshop in Peckham called Review.
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