A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
‘With his third novel, Wood’s talent has burgeoned spectacularly. The book is a tremendous achievement, an unputdownable domestic thriller that is also subtle and moving … travelling well beyond his earlier fiction, Wood has produced a tour de force that marks his creative arrival’ David Grylls, SUNDAY TIMES
‘A novel written from the gut, and with a correspondingly visceral power. A superbly unsettling account of trauma and cautious recovery’ SARAH WATERS
'Elegant and disturbing … this is a novel of expertly woven tension and frightening glimpses into the mind of the deranged other’ John Burnside, GUARDIAN
The acclaimed author of The Ecliptic, Benjamin Wood writes a novel of exceptional force and beauty about the bond between fathers and sons, about the invention and reconciliation of self – weaving a haunting story of violence and love.
One August morning in 1995, the young Daniel and his estranged father Francis – a character of ‘two weathers’, of irresistible charm and roiling self-pity – set out on a road trip to the North that seems to represent a chance to salvage their relationship. But with every passing mile, the layers of Fran’s mendacity and desperation are exposed, pushing him to acts of violence that will define the rest of his son’s life.
‘It will grip you and stay with you… Fran is an expertly drawn troubled male… this is the heart of a beautifully constructed novel’ SHORTLIST
‘[An] intelligent and gripping third novel… Mr Wood thoughtfully teases out the complicated psychology of this father-son relationship … powerful’ COUNTRY LIFE
'The third novel from an exciting English writer still in his 30s, this gut-churning tale of a doomed road-trip begins sweetly enough, before baring its fangs … a chilling study of male violence, framed by a horribly, almost unbearably, moving portrait of a dysfunctional father-son dynamic, it left me in bits' Anthony Cummins, DAILY MAIL
‘Tenderly dissecting the limits of love between parent and child while wriggling with a rich, thrilling tension, this palpably atmospheric story found its way beneath my skin and now lives there. Tell anyone who’ll listen, Benjamin Wood is one of the best novelists in Britain’ DAVID WHITEHOUSE
‘A shocking account of extreme violence and its complicated after-effects. It is a vivid and unsettling novel filled with surprises and insights’ IAN McGUIRE
'A heart-breaking and heart-stopping new novel; a dark Northern noir that moves at breakneck speed but never fails to be tender and vulnerable as well as visceral and terrifying' ANDREW McMILLAN
'A novelist to watch' THE TIMES
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 12-year-old English boy's road trip with his father afflicts the rest of his life in Wood's uneven latest (after The Ecliptic). As a boy, narrator Daniel Hardesty is obsessed with the sci-fi show The Artifex. His father, Francis, estranged from his mother, is a set builder for the show in Leeds, and promises Daniel a studio visit. Francis is also a liar, and Daniel, now narrating as an adult and who hoards VHS tapes of the show, warns the reader that the trip went badly ("when I think about that August week and what transpired, I know it is the fault line under every forward step I try to make"), but it takes a while for the reader to find out just how disastrous. Along the way, Francis's temper and details of his philandering emerge, and he reacts violently when he and Daniel aren't allowed onto the studio lot. On the road, Daniel listens to an Artifex audiobook, and passages from it augment the narrative but add nothing. The novel's conclusion summarizes the immediate aftermath of Francis's actions and offers scattershot scenes from Daniel's adult life, but his soul-searching feels superficial. Before it's over, readers will find themselves searching for the remote.