With her second novel Echolalia, Doyle picks up threads about climate crisis and social expectation and weaves them into a portrait of prosperity’s decline
Last modified on Thu 3 Jun 2021 13.31 EDT
In a country town on the outskirts of the city, a lake is drying up, slowly receding to a puddle. From the glazed windows of her mansion, a young woman watches the landmark shrivel, while inside the house her own world is also shrinking to the rhythms of her baby boy.
It is this foreboding world that author Briohny Doyle invites us into in her second novel, Echolalia. Cleverly named, the book does indeed feel like a mounting repetition of images and actions that ultimately lead to tragedy.
The novel centres on Emma: a promising young woman on the brink of the perfect life â married to a wealthy and charismatic man, and handed a newly-built mansion in the fanciest part of town, she soon becomes pregnant with her first child, her daughter Clem.