The Echo Chamber

by: John Boyne

Goodreads description:

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.

Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.

Powered by John Boyne’s characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.

Helen says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓

What a refreshing change of pace from the heavy books of 2023. This book is hilarious! Even funnier than Carl Hiassen…very spot on about the absurdities of wokeness. John Boyne is an extremely versatile writer covering a wide gamut of topics- contemporary and historical fiction. Most of his subject matter is rather serious, so reading this was a happy surprise…and it just got funnier and funnier with a satisfying, silly ending.

Holly says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓1/2

Please read this book! This might be the funniest book I have ever read – and I mean laugh out loud funny. I cannot believe this is the same John Boyne who wrote The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and All the Broken Places – just stop! He is a literary genius. If you know him and invite him to dinner, please include me! He is at the top of my list of people I would like to meet, and now I want to read everything else he has written. If you are traveling to the UK, this is the perfect pre-travel or take along read. I put this one up there with Bridget Jones Diary – the family version.

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