Episode 45: Evie Wyld on “The Bass Rock”, winner of The Stella Prize 2021

Evie Wyld made a conscious decision with her latest novel, The Bass Rock¸ which has just won the 2021 Stella Prize, that she would not shy away from things that might make people uncomfortable. It is an excoriating exploration of male violence against women through the ages, telling the stories of three women - Sarah, hunted as a witch in the eighteenth century, Ruth, married to a widower with two young sons in the 1950s and Viv, a contemporary woman. Wyld writes with thinly veiled rage about what happens to these women, all the time focussed on the importance of bearing witness. She speaks passionately about gaslighting, the #MeToo movement, and why it is difficult to speak about this book. F *** politeness, she decided.

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