Metronome
The 'unputdownable' BBC Two Between the Covers Book Club Pick
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3.6 • 14 Ratings
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award
Longlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award
'Imagined with an impressively detailed three-dimensional solidity' Sunday Times
'I loved it … You could feel the chill of the wind … Fantastic; it's a great book' Sara Cox, BBC Two 'Between the Covers'
'Stylish and thoughtful … The eerie claustrophobia of the setting will stay with the reader for a long while.' Literary Review
'Unputdownable … An extraordinary book … as insightful and as premonitory as Orwell's 1984' Litro
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Not all that is hidden is lost.
For twelve years Aina and Whitney have been in exile on an island for a crime they committed together, tethered to a croft by pills they must take for survival every eight hours. They've kept busy – Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps – but something is not right.
Shipwrecks have begun washing up, and their supply drops have stopped. And on the day they're meant to be collected for parole, the Warden does not come. Instead there's a sheep. But sheep can't swim…
As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets. And if he's been keeping secrets, maybe she should too. Convinced they've been abandoned, she starts investigating ways she might escape. As she comes to grips with the decisions that haunt her past, she realises her biggest choice is yet to come.
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'Taut, unsettling and so completely charged with both tension and emotion' Naomi Ishiguro
'With echoes of Emily St John Mandel and Megan Hunter' Elizabeth Macneal
'Tense, taut and absorbing' Gemma Reeves
'As moving as it is chilling' Emma Stonex
Reader Reviews
'An original and gripping read'
'Addictive and atmospheric'
'A haunting and original dystopian story'
'Compelling and absorbing'
'A refreshing change from the norm'
Customer Reviews
Isolation
A couple - Aina and Whitney - are serving a sentence for having a child without permission, have been exiled to a remote croft in Northern Scotland. To ensure their security, they are forced to be dependent on pills that are issued every 8 hours. Nearing the end of their sentence, they await a return to civilisation and to their long lost son, Maxime or Max.
Aina yearns to return as quickly as possible, whereas Whitney is more set in his ways and cautious.
Rather than return, they lose all contact with others, including the Warden. What has happened?
The conflict between the two personalities develops. Then strangers arrive, from somewhere unknown.
A story of isolation and reintegration, fears and hopes. Beautifully written.