After the Fire, a Still Small Voice: Summary and book reviews of After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld, plus links to an excerpt from After the Fire, a Still Small Voice and a biography of Evie Wyld.
After the Fire, a Still Small Voice
by Evie Wyld
Hardcover: Aug 2009,
304 pages.
Paperback: Nov 2010,
304 pages.
Set in the haunting landscape of eastern Australia, this is a stunningly accomplished debut novel about the inescapable past: the ineffable ties of family, the wars fought by fathers and sons, and what goes unsaid.
After the departure of the woman he loves, Frank drives out to a shack by the ocean that he had last visited as a teenager. There, among the sugarcane and sand dunes, he struggles to rebuild his life.
Forty years earlier, Leon is growing up in Sydney, turning out treacle tarts at his parents' bakery and flirting with one of the local girls. But when he's drafted to serve in Vietnam, he finds himself suddenly confronting the same experiences that haunt his war-veteran father.
As these two stories weave around each other - each narrated in a voice as tender as it is fierce - we learn what binds Frank and Leon together, and what may end up keeping them apart.
Evie Wyld’s impressive first novel employs the harsh and often dangerous Australian environment as a setting for the loneliness and devastation that can ruin a man’s life after he returns from war... When I finished the story I was left with scenes of jungles, death, loss and sorrow, but also vivid vignettes of young men discovering their sexuality, forming connections with friends, and finding peace of mind through creativity. (Reviewed by Judy Krueger).
The New Yorker
Wyld has a feel both for beauty and for the ugliness of inherited pain. The mood is creepy—strange creatures in the sugar cane, grieving neighbors, a missing local girl—and the sentiment is plain: 'Sometimes people aren't all right and that's just how it is.'
Vogue After the Fire, a Still Small Voice has the kind of dark shimmer that mesmerizes as it disturbs . . . [The characters'] converging stories and silent rage form an eerie chiaroscuro of blinding sunlight and tenebrous bush, rendered in language so naturalistic and sensual it seems more felt than read
Booklist
Ravishingly atmospheric and wisely compassionate ...There's no doubt that Wyld is a writer of immense abilities and depth.
Library Journal
With mental tension, war, missing children, and the daily struggles encountered in the Australian bush, there is plenty to keep the reader engrossed. A definite page-turner that will appeal to those seeking a good escapist read.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. At times startling, Wyl's book is ruminative and dramatic, with deep reserves of empathy colored by masculine rage and repression."
The Times (UK)
A superb first novel.
The Daily Mail (UK)
Just sometimes, a book is so complete, so compelling and potent, that you are fearful of breaking its hold. This is one . . . 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.
The Guardian (UK)
A terrifically self-assured debut . . . It's a cauterising, cleansing tale, told with muscular writing.
Australia's role in the Korean and Vietnam Wars
When war broke out in Korea in June 1950, the United Nations Security Council asked all of its members to assist in repelling the North Korean invasion into South Korea. North Korea was under the influence of the Soviet Union and later in the war Communist China entered the fray as well. Fifteen nations sent contingents to defend South Korea, with the United States being the largest.
Australia committed a squadron of Air Force personnel, equipment, and a battalion from the Royal Australian Regiment. The country's security was felt to be at risk from Communist aggression and the Prime Minister was eager to show its full support of the United Nations. More particularly he wanted to secure a formal alliance with the United States, who were assuming the former British Empire's dominance in Asia. The result was the ANZUS Treaty of 1951. Casualties from Australian troops came to over 1500, with 339 killed.
The Australian participation in Vietnam was more complex. For decades, the country had felt alone...
Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, this is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music.
We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of July.
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(985 words).
The New Yorker
