The Bass Rock
Play sample
  • Published: 4 February 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760894764
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

The Bass Rock

Winner of the 2021 Stella Prize

Formats & editions
Paperback
22 Apr 2021
EBook
4 Feb 2020
Audiobook
4 Feb 2020
Buy from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

The lives of three women weave together across four centuries in the dazzling new book from Evie Wyld, winner of the Miles Franklin Award.

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

In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community.

Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth’s belongings and discovers her place in the past – and perhaps a way forward.

Each woman’s choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.
  • Published: 4 February 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760894764
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld grew up in Australia and the UK. She is part owner of Review, a small independent bookshop in London. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award. In 2011 she was listed as one of the Culture Show’s Best New British Novelists. She was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. In 2013 she was listed as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Evie’s second novel, All the Birds, Singing, was published in 2013. It won the 2014 Miles Franklin Award, the Encore Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, and was longlisted for the 2014 Stella Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her third novel, The Bass Rock, won the 2021 Stella Prize. Her graphic novel with illustrator Joe Sumner, Everything Is Teeth, was published in 2015.

portrait photo of Evie Wyld

Also by Evie Wyld

The Echoes
All the Birds, Singing
After the Fire, A Still Small Voice
See all

Praise for The Bass Rock

A dark, gristly marvel of a novel, The Bass Rock held me in thrall from cover to cover. Evie Wyld is a gothic genius: her narrative of the violence inflicted on women throughout the centuries, and the seething, female anger left in its wake, left me with a deep sense of disquiet that will doubtless remain for years to come.

Hannah Kent

The Bass Rock is a multi-generational modern gothic triumph. It is spectacularly well-observed, profoundly disquieting and utterly riveting. Like all Evie Wyld's work it is startlingly insightful about psychological and physical abuse. It is a haunting, masterful novel.

Max Porter

Wyld is the most stupendous of writers, daring, heartfelt, explosive. The Bass Rock reminds us of all her power and brilliance; it thrums with an anger it is impossible not to feel.

Daisy Johnson

A multilayered masterpiece; vivid, chilling, leaping jubilantly through space and time, it’s a jaw-dropping novel that confirms Wyld as one of our most gifted young writers.

Alex Preston, Observer

Awards & recognition

The Stella Prize

Winner  •  2021  •  The Stella Prize

NSW Premier's Literary Awards

Shortlisted  •  2021  •  Christina Stead Prize

Prime Minister's Literary Awards

Shortlisted  •  2021  •  Fiction