Published 28th November 2017 by Unbound Digital.
Read August 2020.
In 2014, Phoebe Flint visits Echo Hall, where she muses on the fate of the unhappy Flint women of the past and the angry, bitter Flint men in their lives.
This sweeping tale, set against the backdrop of three different wars, starts with the arrival of pregnant newly-wed Ruth Flint at Echo Hall in 1990. Unsure of her marriage to her new husband Adam, who she barely knows, and bewildered by the distant attitude of his grandfather, Jack, Ruth starts to look into the unspoken history of the family.
Through Ruth's eyes, we meet Elsie Flint, who was forced to move into Echo Hall with her cold in-laws in 1942, when husband Jack was away at war, and then even further back to the portentous meeting of 1911 of sisters Rachel and Leah Walters with the stern and religious Jacob Flint.
As Ruth uncovers the secrets of Echo Hall, can she finally bring peace to the Flint family?
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Echo Hall is a most ambitious novel that takes down through the layers of history surrounding the less than happy fortunes of the Flint family.
When Ruth begins to delve into the history of Echo Hall, we go back in time and learn about the various women whose fates have been tied to the men connected to Echo Hall - Ruth herself, Elsie, Rachel and Leah - and there are a lot of secrets to be uncovered.
The story jumps backwards through time as we meet the different women and get to know their stories, which are all linked rather cleverly by love, longing, misunderstanding, jealousy and recrimination. It soon becomes apparent that the weight of history hangs very heavily at Echo Hall, but it is not until you understand the importance of the meeting of Jacob Flint with the sisters Leah and Rachel and the reverberations of what followed that you truly comprehend why such an air of bitterness and sorrow has seeped into the very bricks and mortar of the place.
As a reader, you become completely submerged in the bygone eras of Echo Hall and the memories the house holds. Each seam of the past is rich with the sorrow and essence of the women we come to know - and moving down and then back upwards to the present is almost like travelling into the depths of the very quarry that is so significant to the Flint family, and then thankfully back up into the fresh air.
There are some compelling themes in this story that recur throughout the separate threads of history, and the name Echo Hall is certainly rather fitting as the central focus of them all. Each era in time plays intriguingly with the ideas of war and pacifism, in a way befitting each period, and I found this quite interesting.
I enjoyed how Virginia Moffatt worked her story to play out the fates of the women of Echo Hall against different, but essentially similar backdrops, to reflect the circular nature of the winds of war and thought this worked particularly well with the World War I and II parts of the book. However, I did find the Gulf War element rather contrived for the sake of introducing a theatre of war to Ruth's story - although I understand why Virgina Moffatt wanted to find a link for Ruth with the women of the past.
There is a lot going here to keep you occupied and for the most part it is completely captivating - and tales of family secrets will always get my attention. There is also a rather haunting feel of underlying ghost story in facets of the novel that I found very enjoyable indeed.
If you like your historical fiction immersive and with complex themes of the trials and tribulations of a family weighed down with the legacy of the past, then Echo Hall is going to be a book for you. It is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer, or via the links below:
Thank you to Virginia Moffatt and Unbound Digital for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review and to Emma Welton of Damp Pebbles Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
From the cover of the book:
Phoebe Flint visits Echo Hall in 2014, where she follows in her mother’s footsteps
to uncover the stories of a house ‘full of unhappy women, and bitter, angry men’.
Ruth Flint arrives at Echo Hall in 1990 – newlywed, pregnant,
and uncertain of her relationship with her husband, Adam. Ghostly encounters, a locked door,
and a set of photographs pique her curiosity. But Adam and his grandfather refuse to
let her investigate. And her marriage is further strained, when Adam, a reservist,
is called up to fight in the Gulf War.
In 1942, Elsie Flint is already living at Echo Hall with her children,
the guest of her unsympathetic in-laws, whilst her husband Jack is away with the RAF.
Her only friend is Jack’s cousin Daniel, but Daniel is hiding secrets,
which when revealed could destroy their friendship for good.
Rachel and Leah Walters meet Jacob Flint at a dinner party in 1911.
Whilst Leah is drawn to Jacob, Rachel rejects him leading to conflict with her sister that will reverberate through the generations.
As Ruth discovers the secrets of Echo Hall, she is able to finally bring peace to the Flint family,
and in doing so, discover what she really needs and wants.
Echo Hall is a novel about the past, but it is very much a novel of the now.
Does history always have to repeat itself, or can we find another way?
About the author:
She has written two novels, Echo Hall and The Wave, and she has also published a flash fiction collection called Rapture And What Comes After. She also write non-fiction.
Virginia is married to Chris Cole, Director of Drone Wars UK. They have two daughters at University and a son still living with them in Oxford.
Find out more about Virginia here:
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