Reviews

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

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anperrin's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

literallyelza's review against another edition

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Altough, I absolutely loved "All the birds, singing" I really did not like this book. All the characters felt shallow, annoying, not very developped which would have been fine if the story was more gripping but it didn't work for me. The writing style is the only thing I liked.

lysslysslyss's review

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dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

rhino's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

paulabrandon's review against another edition

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3.0

This is a difficult one to review, as it's a little outside my usual reading preferences! It was in the crime section in the bookstore, and sounded interesting in that respect. However, the author has previously been the winner of the Miles Franklin award, which would suggest a more literary novel. Upon reading it, it definitely has a literary bent, driven by description and character, as opposed to your standard crime novel that is driven more by plot.

For me, I read for good stories and interesting characters, not for the joy of prose. While The Bass Rock has all three, it was sometimes quite impenetrable for me. The first 50 pages or so were quite the struggle, but the more I read, indeed, the more I became caught up with the story.

The Bass Rock explores the lives of three different women in various periods of time in the same area. First is Sarah, accused of being a witch in the 1700s. She is rescued from a rape by a near-outcast pastor and goes on the run with him and a small band of his followers, including his son, Joseph (who is actually the narrator of these chapters.)

Second is Ruth, set after the second world war, who has married the widowed Peter and looking after his children (while they're home from boarding school), while Peter spends most of his time at work. Left on her own a lot, Ruth befriends the cook, Betty, and allow's Betty's niece Bernadette to live with them. Ruth is also encourages to befriend the locals and "fit in" more.

Third is Viv, Ruth's granddaughter, who has gone to the house after a breakdown, to catalogue Ruth's belongings. She befriends Maggie, who it turns out to be a drifter and sex worker. She quickly develops a strange relationship with Victor, a man she meets at the shops. She also has a somewhat strained relationship with her sister, Katherine.

The book explores how women's lives are affected by the men around them. Even the good ones leave an indelible mark on them. (Ruth's brother, Viv's father, Sarah's rescuer.) We then become witness to how women are subject to sexual harassment, intimidation, violence and sexual violence, and sometimes remain silent and complicit because society expects them to act a certain way, no matter what decade it might be. Of course, this is revealed to us bit by bit amongst a lot of flowery "literary" writing.

There are brief flashes of the supernatural. Although Ruth and Viv's stories are linked through family, the chapters involving Sarah aren't connected, other than by geographical location and violence against women. Mainly reading commercial and trope-laden fiction that likes to tie things up nicely at the end, means I was left hanging by the many unanswered questions left dangling by the end of this one.

Clearly, this book is confidently and assuredly written. It will generate much debate if, say, read for high school, college or book club. You could discuss your interpretations of the material endlessly, and muse on what you think happened to the characters, or what

Spoiler

Maggie said to Dom that made him magically abandon his plans of violence at the wake

, amongst many others.

You see, things don't tie up a neat bow at the end. Should all books do this? No, of course not. But where I live, a new print edition of a book usually costs $30. I use reading as an escape. So much about real life is uncertain, I enjoy fiction that takes me to another place/world but also provides me with all the answers to what's going on in that place/world. For $30 here, I indeed got sucked into another world, quite vividly, but left me too many unanswered questions at the end for me to be in any way satisfied. This is just personal preference, of course, but if I'm plonking down 30 bucks to enter another author's world, I want that author to explain themselves, not just leave me at the end to decide how I think things turned out and how they're connected. (Indeed, I pay money exactly so I don't have to do that.)

I read quite a few other reviews once I finished to see if they could clarify the many lingering questions I had, and that made it doubly clear that the book was open to so many interpretations. For example, the book has several interludes of violence that has been perpetrated against seemingly anonymous women. A lot of readers mention these anonymous women as examples of how voiceless women have been victims of violence across centuries. However, I was fairly certain these vignettes related to violence perpetrated against the more minor female characters in the book, such as Joseph's sister and mother, and particularly Mary, Bernadette's mother.

See what I mean? You can take a hundred different things away from the book.

The Bass Rock is definitely the type of book to leave you thinking about for days afterwards, and if you pick it for your book club, you'll have a ton of material to discuss! Just look at the messy, tangential nature of my review! Very well-written, but as a lass who likes their stories to tie together way more than this one does, the book ultimately wasn't for me.