Foe
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3.9 • 23 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
'Reads like a house on fire' - the extraordinary new novel by Iain Reid, the acclaimed author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things
You think you know everything about your life.
Long-married couple Junior and Henrietta live a quiet, solitary life on their farm, where they work at the local feed mill and raise chickens. Their lives are simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.
Until everything you think you know collapses.
Until the day a stranger arrives at their door with alarming news: Junior has been chosen to take an extraordinary journey, a journey across both time and distance, while Hen remains at home. Junior will be gone for years. But Hen won't be left alone.
Who can you trust if you can't even trust yourself?
As the time for his departure draws nearer, Junior finds himself questioning everything about his life - even whether it's really his life at all.
An eerily entrancing page-turner, Foe churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale. Perfect for fans of Humans, Westworld and Black Mirror, Foe is a book you will never forget.
*** Praise for FOE ***
‘I couldn’t put it down. It infected my dreams. A creepy and brilliant book’ Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People
'The narrative is so eerie and disturbing… fuelling the reader’s unease; Reid pulls off a wonderful twist in the tail’ Guardian
‘From the opening page, you’ll have an uneasy feeling as you settle into Iain Reid’s brilliant new novel.. A masterful and breathtakingly unique read. I can’t stop thinking about it ‘ Amy Stuart, author of Still Mine and Still Water
‘Spare, consuming, unforgettable. Foe is a dark arrow from a truly original mind. Page by eerie page, Iain Reid pulls the unknown world out from under you, and leaves you trapped inside a marriage’s most haunting question: can I be replaced? This is a book that seeps into your bloodstream – and crowns Iain Reid the king of deadpan, philosophical horror’ Claudia Dey, author of Heartbreaker
‘Movie producers are simply confirming what the literary community already knows: Iain Reid just might be the most exciting and excitingly unclassifiable author working in Canadian fiction today’ - The Globe and Mail (Canada)
‘Foe reads like a house on fire, and is almost impossible not to finish in one sitting...an otherworldly hothouse of introversion and fantasy’ – The Toronto Star
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the beginning of the latest nerve-wracking novel from Reid (I'm Thinking of Ending Things), Junior and Henrietta lead a peaceful, solitary life on their farm in the near future. They wake up, drink coffee, go to work, and come home. Sometimes Henrietta plays the piano they found in their house. All of that is interrupted one day by the arrival of the mysterious Terrance, sent on behalf of the space research organization OuterMore to inform Junior he's been longlisted in a lottery for a temporary resettlement expedition into space called the Installation. Junior never applied for the program, and Terrance's appearance knocks them off-kilter, but Junior and Henrietta are able to eventually put it out of their minds that is, until Terrance returns two years later to congratulate Junior on being selected for the Installation. When Junior expresses worries about being separated from Henrietta and leaving her alone, Terrance unveils the other side of the plan: while Junior is in space, a synthetic duplicate will come to take his place, working his job and keeping Henrietta company. In order to collect data for this duplicate, Terrance moves in with Junior and Henrietta, but as the days go on, Junior starts to believe there is something more sinister at play that Terrance is not telling him. Though the ending falls a little short, Reid proves once again that he is a master of atmosphere and suspense. Readers won't be able to put this one down.
