The Bass Rock

By: Evie Wyld

Narrated by: Julie Graham, Kirsty Strain, Ross Anderson

Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The lives of three women weave together across four centuries in this dazzling 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.

©2020 Evie Wyld (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic 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)

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)

Wondrous... Expertly chilling... Wyld consistently entertains, juggling the pleasures of several different genres. (John Williams)