Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
“Birds flew out of your face!”
From its very first scene, Echo is a gripping, terrifying read.
A woman is alone in a chalet in the mountains. Except she’s not alone. In the shadows downstairs, she thinks she sees people. And then she’s sure of it. They’re creeping up the stairs towards her. Moving only when she looks away. Or blinks. They’re getting closer and closer. She cowers in her bed, pulls her blankets up to protect her from the monsters…
It is a dazzlingly scary opening and, immediately, Echo had me hooked.
But that’s just the beginning. Echo is a story about the (evil) power of mountains, and one evil mountain in particular: the Maudit (actually a real mountain located in the Alps — its name literally means Cursed Mountain).
Echo tells the story of young mountaineer Nick, who recently survived a doomed expedition up the Maudit. He was the sole survivor, in fact. His climbing buddy, Augustin, apparently died up there. Somehow.
Nick himself just barely survived. He suffered a strange and horrific trauma to his face, leaving him a bloody, bandaged mess. Beneath those physical scars, however, is far worse that anyone can imagine. For the Maudit has possessed him and bestowed him with awesome terrible powers. And now he leaves a trail of death in his wake.
Nick’s story is told both from his own perspective — as he attempts to recover from his injuries as well as his recollections of what really happened on the mountain — and that of his boyfriend, Sam, who is very much not a mountaineer.
It is Sam’s perspective that dominates the book as he is the closest person in the world to Nick. It is he who experiences firsthand the changes within Nick, and the increasing power he now wields — whether consciously or not. It is he who must protect Nick from the suspicions of those who’ve suffered the consequences of Nick’s newfound abilities, and from the gravely superstitious Alpine villagers who fear the Maudit.
It is also Sam who has a secret history that underpins the central themes of the novel; a childhood transgression which explains his deep-rooted aversion to all mountains.
Echo is an interesting hybrid of a novel. It’s absolutely literary fiction — artsy, character-driven, and with a distinct auteur style — but it also has a focused plot centered on Nick’s mutilation and mutation. It also, wonderfully, literally contains the line “Birds flew out of your face!”
Echo is an exceedingly well-written book and could absolutely sit comfortably on any highfalutin literature snob’s bookcase, but it’s also genuinely terrifying and a ripping good read.
A chilling, fascinating, page-turner of a novel.
Written by Olde Heuvelt in his native Dutch, Echo was translated into English by Moshe Gilula, who’s done a thoroughly excellent job of converting the lexicon into contemporary American-English — especially in the case of Sam’s character who is a well-off, well-traveled, millennial New Yorker.
Echo feels fresh, scary, and — crucially — different. It succeeds in painting the mountains as both an alluring and awful place. A perfect setting, then, for the dichotomy of horror to thrive.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. You can support Horror Harwood by buying Echo on Amazon here. Thank you :)