After the Fire, a Still Small Voice

By: Evie Wyld

Narrated by: David Tredinnick

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.

©2009 Evie Wyld (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"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." (Daily Mail)

"It's not often that I fall for a novel from the very first page, but the controlled and expressive opening to After the Fire, a Still Small Voice is utterly irresistible.... It is a superb novel." (Guardian.co.uk)

"At times startling, Wyld's book is ruminative and dramatic, with deep reserves of empathy colored by masculine rage and repression.... The two narrative threads stay separate until the final pages, and, refreshingly, their connection isn't overplayed." (Publishers Weekly, starred)