Tournament of Books discussion

space to discuss 2022 TOB contender "The Echo Wife" by Sarah Gailey

I'm 87 pages into The Echo Wife and my initial interest is waning - I love the idea of the book, but I'm seeing glaring inconsistencies (view spoiler)[If Martine is 'programmed' to be a docile, helpmeet kind of person, how could she possibly take the initiative to stab Nathan to death, rather than run away? If Nathan is such a lazy, relatively inept scientist, how did he create a clone that was so much more advanced than Evelyn's creations? (hide spoiler)] that are turning me away. Evelyn's personality is interesting enough to keep me hanging on to my library copy for a while longer though.

Nadine in California wrote: "I'm 87 pages into The Echo Wife and my initial interest is waning - I love the idea of the book, but I'm seeing glaring inconsistencies [spoilers removed] that are turning me away. Evelyn's persona..."

Yeah, I'm with you. I DNF'd. I'm going to save the catalog of my disappointments for the tournament, though.

If anyone got through this and can tell me it takes a turn and redeems the opening 40%, please speak up!

Nadine in California wrote: "I'm 87 pages into The Echo Wife and my initial interest is waning - I love the idea of the book, but I'm seeing glaring inconsistencies that are turning me away. Evelyn's persona..."

I know that's true, but really this was just a fun read for me. I picked it up last winter when I was in the depths of Covid despair, spending all day every day alone with my daughter, exhausted and just needing an escape at night. I didn't expect lit-er-ah-toor, and I didn't let myself question whether it made sense (a lot of it is just out there, really over the top.) But it was reasonably well written, and it worked perfectly at what I needed it to do at the time.

I was really surprised to see it on the shortlist, though.

I'm about halfway through and absolutely loving it. Something about it is just what I needed right now! Tim and Nadine I probably couldn't talk you into continuing if it didn't grab you already.

I don't know what this is based on, but I think they could have made a much better title and cover. The book is different than I expected based on my "judging the book by its cover." :)

Elizabeth wrote: "Nadine in California wrote: "I'm 87 pages into The Echo Wife and my initial interest is waning - I love the idea of the book, but I'm seeing glaring inconsistencies that are turning me away. Evelyn..."

Most of it was a bit too much of a stretch (and there were various inconsistencies) but I found a few things to pull out of it (like exploring the responsibilities of science). It ended up being a 3.5 star read for me (showing on GR as 4 since I almost always round up on ratings). It's a decent escape read, but it didn't feel like a ToB book for me. :/

I JUST finished this book!! My main complaint was Gailey's fondess for the passive voice and having a lot of the action take place off-stage, and allllll the endless reminiscing. That drove me nuts.

I couldn't figure out where Gailey was going with this story, and that kept me riveted, just to find out what would happen next. And the ending was okay, I guess. There is a lot of build up, and not enough pay off.




Nadine in California wrote: "I'm 87 pages into The Echo Wife and my initial interest is waning - I love the idea of the book, but I'm seeing glaring inconsistencies [spoilers removed] that are turning me away. ..."

Some of this is part of the plot. The thing about Nathan is just Evelyn's general "hornet" like nature and her big ego about how no one is as good as she is at what she does (and that sounds like it's based on a lot of fact). None of her assistants are ever good enough for her, except Sayid. No one measures up to her standard.

And the thing about Martine becomes a plot point at the end. It's not a RIVETING plot point, but Evelyn changes her research to focus on that aspect (view spoiler)[ of how can a clone change its conditioning? (hide spoiler)]


I went absolutely bonkers, however, when they added lime to the garden soil to make it more acidic. THAT was a glaring error.


What I didn't realize until I got to the end and read the Author's Acknowledgement is that this is a book about "abuse and grooming and identity." Maybe if I had realized that was Gailey's theme, I would have focused a bit more on that and found more meaning in the story.

This book fell in the category of "unreadable" to me, which is a completely different category for me than "bad," because of my autism. Sometimes what other people read as perfectly fine sentences just don't make sense to me at all. The Push was like that for me, as well. Both of these books were misfiring in the same way in my brain.

lark wrote: "This book fell in the category of "unreadable" to me, which is a completely different category for me than "bad," because of my autism. Sometimes what other people read as perfectly fine sentences ..."

That's so interesting, and makes me want to understand why. I thought the writing here was reasonably good, not brilliant, not melodic, but above average. (The Push I thought was complete dreck, though, I couldn't get through it.)

This one grew on me. I just finished it a couple of hours ago, and for me it really did get better somewhere after the halfway point. I read it immediately after The Love Songs of Dubois, which I adored, so it definitely suffered by comparison initially. After a slow warm up I was propelled by the plot and a need to find out what would happen next. I found the main character intriguing as well, especially how her early trauma played out later on in both her anger and insularity.

I am intrigued enough to want to know how the rest of the story goes though. I can see how it could hit the spot if you're in just the right head space for it. I'd have never expected that Several People Are Typing would be one of my tournament favorites so far!

Nadine in NY wrote: "What I didn't realize until I got to the end and read the Author's Acknowledgement is that this is a book about "abuse and grooming and identity." Maybe if I had realized that was Gailey's theme, I would have focused a bit more on that and found more meaning in the story.
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Nadine I'm so glad you flagged this since it gave me a different perspective as I finished the second half of the book and I picked up on a lot of hints at that theme. Made me think of My Sister the Serial Killer - how it feels like a "fun" book on the surface, but it's got some deeper seriousness that can be easy to miss.

What worked for me in this book is Evelyn, and the contrast between how she could recognize the misogynist, objectifying way Nathan hated her and wanted to make a new her, and her failure to recognize her own objectifying and abusive actions towards Martine and all the other clones she has ever made.

It also helped that I was reading Klara and the Sun at the same time. While both had themes of what it means to be a person and what the value of an individual is, Gailey was willing to really plumb the depths of her world and its implications (sometimes feeling like she was belaboring the point) whereas Ishiguro has such a light touch that Klara ended up feeling shallower.

I really liked this one actually (though never expected it to make the shortlist!) as it kept making me wonder, “who is Dr Frankenstein, and who is the monster?” Evelyn’s research is introduced gently enough that you don’t realize how horrific it is until it keeps adding layers and my opinion of her kept shifting which I think was the point. I’m not in love with the end but I felt satisfied with it.

Amy wrote: "I really liked this one actually (though never expected it to make the shortlist!) as it kept making me wonder, “who is Dr Frankenstein, and who is the monster?” Evelyn’s research is introduced gen..."



That's a good point. She acts so scientific about it all, it takes a while to realize exactly how horrific her work is. "Conditioning" the clones is just awful, and she's so casual about it.

Just finished it. Nothing special imo. Kind of ridiculous in a lot of places. A happy ending was unexpected.

I felt like it was a read I picked up, sped through, and ultimately didn't really remember. Nothing standout. Nothing like the alternative history hippo westerns the author started with and are well worth a read.

Jason wrote: "Just finished it. Nothing special imo. Kind of ridiculous in a lot of places. A happy ending was unexpected."

This sums up my review, too. It's one I'm looking forward to discussion on so I can see what I missed. My reading experience was largely 'getting through it'.

Jenny - it is a HUGE departure from the weirdness of her other stories, for which I think I gave her extra goodwill :)

I'm about halfway through reading these comments through my fingers. I am enjoying the book, it's a fun-ish ride, the reader for the audiobook is keeping it dead serious, but when I described the basic plot (so far) to my wife, she asked "So...it's a comedy?"

Holy smokes did I hate this book. Saying the plot was a “stretch” is being too generous IMO, it was just ridiculous and left giant holes that were unrecoverable. I did feel like it was an appropriate end to this dumb year, though. So there’s that…

I thought I had this one all figured out, but it took a turn I didn’t expect near the end. I give it points for that. I was also fascinated by the character of Evelyn (as many of you have mentioned). She reminded me a bit of the abhorrent researcher in Yanigahara’s People In the Trees. She was so strong willed and smart and also lacked self awareness. It was nice to see a woman in this role that is more often played by men. The questions raised around “what makes a human?” are interesting as well, and I do think this novel got deeper into those than the light touch of Ishiguro in Kara and the Sun (as also mentioned above). For me, this was a genre novel that rose above the average sci fi thriller. It shouldn’t win the TOB, but I’m glad I read it.

Just finished this one (my first of the 2022 short list! I’m behind!)

I enjoyed it even though I found Evelyn pretty unlikeable. I thought it was very interesting to think of the novel as an allegory for abuse and grooming, especially after reading the acknowledgments. I haven’t read klara and the sun yet but look forward to comparing their approaches to addressing the topic of what makes us human.

I'm about a third of the way in now, and I kind of like how soapy and plot-twisty it is.
I am HIGHLY amused to realize that this is the same author as the hippo westerns.

I just finished it and I loved it; the cycles of abuse stood out to me, but I hadn't thought of it as grooming until I got to the acknowledgements. And the horror of the ending took my breath away -- that (view spoiler)[she recreated her family of origin with herself in the patriarchal monster role and is sure that *this time* nothing will go wrong -- wow. How long before Martine is burying Evelyn in the garden to protect Violet? (hide spoiler)]

I loved this book. I think I've read like 10 on the TOB list and this one is my favorite. For whoever said to think of it as the process of grooming an abuse victim - thank you. I honestly wasn't sure what to think of it at first and kind of loved/hated it but once I started thinking of it like that, it all fell into place for me and I loved/loved it.

I didn't particularly like the writing style and I felt that it was a case of a great concept that could have been executed better and I also think it had some plot holes and things that didn't make sense. But I still enjoyed it and loved all the twists. It was very entertaining while also being thought-provoking about the nature of abuse.

4 to 4.5 stars. I guess I'm a very picky reader because I haven't found any 5 star reads in TOB or yet this year so far but this one probably comes the closest for me. (At first I was sure Klara was my first 5-star read of the tournament and year but then I felt really let down by the second half.)

This is the only author so far whose other works I will actively seek out.

Oh, and now I need to find out what these hippo western books are! I hadn't heard of this author before this year's TOB but was already interested in checking out her other works just based on concept and storytelling structure (not necessarily writing style).

The ebook is on sale for Kindle today $2.99