Description
What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds – and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.
The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a ‘national treasure’ (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant.
Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.
Powered by John Boyne’s characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.
Sarah TURNER –
This is John Boyne as I’ve never known him before! I came to this having read a great many of John’s previous novels, and the closest comparison I can make is take the last two chapters of his last novel ( a traveller at the gates of wisdom) and turn that style of writing into a whole novel! If you’ve read it , you’ll know what I mean!
This is highly mischievous, farcical, and fun, and is a great modern satire on the social media obsession of the past 10 or so years.
This is a full on comedic novel that I think John has teased us all with for many a year. I bet he had huge fun writing this! Loved some of the references to his previous work ( Maud Avery, Zelda of course) .
Very different, and a lot of fun.