John Boyne is one of my favourite authors and I was so excited to get a copy of his latest book, The Echo Chamber. I was not disappointed. I laughed till I cried and cringed in recognition at his exploration of how social media has impacted society and our human connection.
John Boyne (Photo by Rich Gilligan).
The book follows the Cleverley family: George is a famous BBC TV presenter, Beverley is a famous author and they have three children Nelson, Elizabeth and Achilles. The family is fabulously dysfunctional and their interactions form a large part of the humour in the book.
Nelson is a shy loner who can only interact with other people when wearing uniforms, Elizabeth is obsessed with followers and achieving the ‘blue tick’ given by Twitter to people ‘who matter’ and Achilles is the young con artist, using technology to entangle older men and then extort money from them. Add in a horny Ukrainian dancer, a tortoise and a world changing boyfriend who refuses to bathe as ‘the body is self cleansing’ and the stage is set.
There are many uncomfortable revelations on the ‘cancellation’ of people based on current or previous comments made and how the totality of someone’s contribution to society can be reduced to a single ‘offensive’ tweet. At a moment when we are all interacting so much more through social media due to the global Covid pandemic, it’s a timely novel to remind us how we define each other and especially those in the public eye.
Boyne strikes the perfect balance between family dysfunction, genuine exploration of current social circumstances, fabulous writing and individual responsibility in a social media world. The Echo Chamber is a wonderful way to spend a couple of days in this crazy world we live in. Comforting, challenging, engaging and funny – I absolutely loved this book.
—The Echo Chamber by John Boyne (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.
The Echo Chamber
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...
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