After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

Plot introduction

• Frank is trying to escape his troubled past by running away to his family's beach shack. As he struggles to make friends with his neighbours and their precocious young daughter Sal, he discovers the community has fresh wounds of its own. A girl is missing, and when Sal too disappears, suspicion falls on Frank.
• Decades earlier, Leon tries to hold together his family's cake shop as their suburban life crumbles in the aftermath of the Korean War. When war breaks out again, Leon must go from sculpting sugar figurines to killing young men as a conscript in the Vietnam War.

  Title

Reception

• Lee Rourke in The Independent on Sunday rounds off his review saying "Wyld's writing is assured enough to elongate metaphor and symbolism, creating a novel both taut and otherworldly. This adroit examination of loss, lostness and trauma is the beginning of great things".
• The Observer has the following praise from Francesca Segal, "The landscape of Australia's east coast looms large in the book, wild and sinister, filled with light and tragedy. This is a sad and lovely novel from a talented new writer".

  Publication history

• 2009, UK, Jonathan Cape,, Pub date 13 Aug 2009, Paperback
• 2009, US, Pantheon,, Pub date 25 Aug 2009 Hardback
• 2010, UK, Vintage,, Pub date 22 Apr 2010, Paperback
• 2010, Australia, Vintage,, Pub date 1 Sep 2010, Paperback
• 2010, US, Vintage,, Pub date 2 Nov 2010, Paperback
• 2011, Australia, Bolinda,, Pub date 2 Jan 2011, Audio CD, read by David Tredinnick
• 2012, Australia, Bolinda,, Pub date 25 Jun 2012, MP3 CD