💛 Hold onto your hashtags and switch to airplane mode because I need to rave about The Echo Chamber.

🧡 Much as the Greek Gods represented the sun, sea, earth, sky and all in between, Boyne created the Cleverley family. Parents, sons and daughter, each one embodies different aspects of social media and modern excess. Virtue signalling, self promotion, follower obsession, the politics of prejudice and beyond, the Celeverleys gleefully indulge in them all.

💚 This book was, in itself, an indulgence. I relished every guilt-free moment of despising this genetic grouping of privileged, self-obsessed, vapid, superficial narcissists. But this is about much more than bad people behaving badly. It is through these characters and their entertaining thoughts and escapades that Boyne explores what it is to live and die by the social media sword.

💜 Through absurdist extremes and biting witticisms, Boyne takes modern contradictions on safari. Then he tears them apart like a lion mauling a ghost writer who gets too close in pursuit of the perfect selfie.

🧡 Absurdist comedy in literature is rare and rarely as good as this. Were it a YouTube video, it would be cast by Wendy Holden and directed by Jon Ronson. Were it a tweet, it would be trolled by Douglas Adams' Vogons and eventually removed for breaching the rules.

🤎 Finally, I have neglected thus far to mention the real star of this show; that intrepid tortoise known as Ustym Karmaliuk. He is the true hero of this tale.