Born in London in 1980, the author Evie Wyld grew up between her home town and Australia. Named one of Granta’s best of young British novelists in 2013, her debut, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (2009), won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize and a Betty Trask award, while her follow-up, All the Birds, Singing (2013), received the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize. Her latest novel, The Echoes (Vintage), is a ghost story set between London and Australia. She lives with her husband and son in south London, where she runs a small independent bookshop called Review.
1. Film
Reptile (dir Grant Singer, 2023)
Benicio del Toro is a cop with a past trying to solve a murder, while at the same time having a new kitchen fitted. At a murder scene he covets a particularly lovely tap. Justin Timberlake is a creepy estate agent, the role he was born to play. It’s a slow unfurling of clue leading to clue and pulled threads leading to a bigger crime, like those 90s procedural thrillers I would watch as a kid. It’s driven by the central performance of Del Toro, who hulks at the centre of it. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that he and Alicia Silverstone, who plays his wife, are within 10 years of each other’s age and both have actual human faces that can show emotion.
2. Book
The Chain by Chimene Suleyman
When I first read this, I spent the entire time swearing out loud. Then I gave it to my husband to read, who did the same thing. Then we swore at each other. It’s the story of Suleyman’s relationship, and the subsequent breakdown of it, with a conman, and her discovery of the network of women he’d done exactly the same to. This feels like it finds an essential truth about what it is to be a woman in the world. The author is a poet and it shows in the telling details she consistently finds, and the cumulative weight this slim book carries.
3. Restaurant
139 Fika, Peckham, London
Right round the corner from me on Bellenden Road in Peckham, this is a cafe in the day and a restaurant in the evening and serves a fusion of Caribbean, African and British food. It’s quite new and I’m still working my way through the menu, but everything I’ve tried so far has been excellent; the scrambled ackee and fried plantain was a revelation. Their cocktails are brilliant too. There are a lot of places to eat in Peckham, but Fika feels like it’s doing something exciting and different and I want to eat its vibrant, elegant food a lot more.
4. Music
Songs for Drella by Lou Reed and John Cale
I’m very bad at listening to music, and when I like something, I generally listen to it until I wear it out. My dad bought me this album when I was 10, and it’s a weird thing to buy for a 10-year-old – a tribute to Andy Warhol by Reed and Cale who had been estranged for years until they saw each other at Warhol’s memorial service. It’s an apology, a love story and a work of ventriloquism. It’s sweet and abrasive and sometimes sounds like songs from a musical. When my father died, I found listening to any music at all really hard for a long time. I started listening to this again about a month ago. I’m sure I’ll wear it out soon, but right now it’s the soundtrack to my life.
5. Podcast
Miss Me…?
Sometimes it feels as if podcasts are dominated by men of a certain age, confidently explaining the world. In this one, two women, aged 39 and 40, talk about what it’s like being a woman – and it’s so good. Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver genuinely love each other and have known each other since they were kids. They make each other laugh, they lift each other up and they share each other’s secrets. Every woman I know is listening to it. If you were a teenager in the 90s, you have to listen to it.
6. Instagram
This is what Instagram is for. Scott flies a drone along California’s coastline and captures, among other things, the moments when surfers and swimmers cross paths with great white sharks. Mostly they have no idea what glides beneath them. It’s an important reminder that the sharks and the humans who use their habitat for leisure exist in almost total harmony, as they go about their business, every now and then looking up at us like we would a pigeon.
