Mick Holden’s life is as dull as the bleak weather that rolls in from the Irish Sea. The Seagull’s Rest, a pub he frequents, collects others whose lives have wandered beyond sadness, slipping into a bleary state of indifference they don’t want to get out of.

His nighttime dreams disturb the monotony he has found comfort in. Their contents are omens of events yet to come. Inconsequential at first. Then chilling, mind-bending, life altering, but only to those who can remember once everything is rewritten as if it never existed at all.

Journalist Alice Whittaker, a chronicler of truth, is invited to unravel the mystery alongside Mick; he cannot think of a better person to have by one’s side when facts need to be lifted from obscurity. Their very identities are threatened with total erasure. Retracing the disappearances down to the start, where it all began decades in the past, all while the town they are surrounded by alters itself to keep its secrets forgotten.

Spoiler-Free Plot

It starts out small. With little, insignificant things. A dog barking. A man making his way to work, dropping something along the way. Knowing all the answers to quiz show questions playing on the telly at the local pub. And then it gets bigger. Places aren’t where they used to be, and people disappear, their faces erased from photos, all records vanished. No one knows where they went, nor who they were. When you ask, they squint, take a second too long before they tell you they’ve never heard of that name before, haven’t seen what lay before their eyes, taking up space and thought and feeling.

It was easy for Mick to dismiss it all when it didn’t mean anything. Then Gary wasn’t at The Seagull’s Rest, nursing a pint at the sticky table where he always sat. And then his dreams set the pub ablaze. He could feel himself blurring at the edges. His waking movements observed by someone or something cognizant of his attention tracking the irregularities no one else seemed to notice.

Agitation bubbles within him. Unsure of the stalker’s intentions towards him, Mick decides to share what he knows in the hopes of uncovering information to staunch the flow of forgetfulness spilling out freely onto Blackpool’s cobbled streets. Recruiting Alice Whittaker was a sensible choice—her unmatched relentlessness and keen observation would prove to be invaluable. They would follow the enigmatic clues that found them, written by people who walked the same path before them. The end of the mystery lies in its beginning, a place with no guaranteed return.

My Take on Fractured Echoes: You can’t fight what you can’t remember

From start to finish, I was deeply impressed with everything about this book. I have only secondhand recounts of what Blackpool is like: a seaside resort town with a fading lustre. Setting aside the true origin for a moment, its name conjures up the image of a depthless body of water, and the sinking feeling elicited gives the author a perfect location for his story to wander through.

The essence of the town is captured in a way that transposes readers into the story; you can taste the fast food grease in the air, feel the weight of the fog in your lungs with every inhale, the icy chill seeping into your bones, freezing you from the inside out. Blackpool’s gray, briny soul merges with your own for 165 pages.

We get to experience the premise of the story through the fictional and non-fictional elements we interact with. Unless my internet search skills prove to be lacking, some of the buildings we navigate throughout the course of the story do not exist in real life, while others do. Just as places are deleted from the literary reality created for us by the author, the illusion of their presence stricken from the present world we live in runs in parallel for the readers.

Repetition does a great disservice to other books, whereas in this one, a series of recurring events, arranged in opaque layers one on top of another makes the key developments boldly seep through to the surface. It is styled as one dream sequence blended together, where reality melts before your very eyes.

The misdirection of main characters added a sense of complicity in the perpetuation of the cycle, once considered inescapable by those it held captive. We are sucked into it with both main characters. Any feelings of despair or surrender drawn by the loss of Mick, and learning of how many came and failed before him would’ve meant our succumbing to erasure like everyone did before Alice’s refusal.

Juxtaposed against Alice’s determination—which mimicked the fire where everything began and ended—gives us something to take into our daily lives where some have long been moored to complacency, where a little bit of fire is needed to burn those ropes to ashes. While our lives may not be in imminent danger, we might be able to avoid being shrouded by the shadow of despondency into our final days.

High energy and action aren’t always necessary inclusions in novels in this genre. Without them, a mounting sense of dread still lurked around every street corner, and behind every door for our characters. It peeked out from the bottom of every page for us, waiting to be turned over for it to reveal itself. Protagonists and readers alike are haunted by the corporeal antagonist looming over us all.

There seemed to be an underlying allegorical intention I couldn’t fully glean as I made my way through the book. I may be mistaken, but this is a story I envision myself reading again in the future in the hopes of fulfilling that mystery for myself, and if not, then purely for enjoyment. Recommending it to others is a means for me to play a small role in ushering in the inevitable success J J Noad’s writing will find in the future.

In a final note, J.J. Noad delivers a haunting, dreamlike tale that captures Blackpool’s fading soul with atmospheric brilliance and unforgettable depth.

Age Rating

15 years and above

Content Warnings

Esoteric themes.

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