{"id":150785,"date":"2021-09-08T13:06:29","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T02:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=150785"},"modified":"2022-02-03T09:11:01","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T22:11:01","slug":"review-the-echo-chamber-by-john-boyne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2021\/09\/08\/review-the-echo-chamber-by-john-boyne\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: The Echo Chamber by John Boyne"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

John Boyne is one of my favourite authors and I was so excited to get a copy of his latest book, The Echo Chamber<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"John<\/a>

John Boyne (Photo by Rich Gilligan).<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n

Nelson is a shy loner who can only interact with other people when wearing uniforms, Elizabeth is obsessed with followers and achieving the \u2018blue tick\u2019 given by Twitter to people \u2018who matter\u2019 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 \u2018the body is self cleansing\u2019 and the stage is set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many uncomfortable revelations on the \u2018cancellation\u2019 of people based on current or previous comments made and how the totality of someone\u2019s contribution to society can be reduced to a single \u2018offensive\u2019 tweet. At a moment when we are all interacting so much more through social media due to the global Covid pandemic, it\u2019s a timely novel to remind us how we define each other and especially those in the public eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em> is a wonderful way to spend a couple of days in this crazy world we live in. Comforting, challenging, engaging and funny \u2013 I absolutely loved this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014The Echo Chamber<\/a><\/em> by John Boyne (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Comforting, challenging, engaging and funny \u2013 I absolutely loved this book.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":150793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6678],"tags":[1974,2851,4212,4484,13548],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/TheEchoChamber-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150785"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160189,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150785\/revisions\/160189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}