Metronome: The 'unputdownable' BBC Two Between the Covers Book Club Pick

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A book in a day, rare thing for me. However, a plane flight will help. This debut novel by Tom Watson is for me, a work that’s unable to be pigeonholed. Sure, there’s an undercurrent of mild thriller, a human study, a deeper issue of crime and punishment - no matter what the crime or misdemeanour, and whether the punishment fits it. Metronome is Tom Watson’s debut novel and wow, what a debut it is. I don’t want to reveal too much about the plot as I think it’s one it’s best to go into blind. Tom Watson has conjured a relationship corroded by compromise and capitulation, and worked it into an extraordinary love story - or rather, a story of what love looks like when affection and trust have fallen away * The Times * This book really emphasises the two types of people - those who accept what is, and those who try to chang their situation. The events move along at a good pace - for life on an exile island, and soon all is revealed to be not as we, or they, were lead to believe.

I thought the storyline was really interesting and not like anything I had ever read before. The author clearly has a great imagination for creating worlds not quite like our own, but scarily close to what could happen in real life. Both Whitney and Aina were very complex characters but unfortunately I did not seem to warm to either of them. I wonder if this may have been the point? As both characters have lots of secrets that they keep to themselves throughout the novel and we don't ever really get to understand what they all are. First, it’s very readable. The character list is sparse but the two protagonists are so well realised and at times both oddly quite relatable, despite their extraordinary circumstances. The book is called ‘metronome’ and that could apply to the plotting style as well, it’s expertly paced, the momentum in the final third is unrelenting. All books for Between The Covers have been carefully chosen to include something for everyone and are guaranteed to spark entertaining conversation. It does also get an Ambiguous Ending Alert ™ though. The ending is in somewhat of a delirium state due to events, so what then occurs can be taken in various ways. You can imagine a 'happy ending' if you like, although realistically it seems unlikely. Anyway, if you don't like those sorts of endings, be forewarned. Tom Watson is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia where he was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize. Metronome – his debut novel – has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.Unputdownable ... An extraordinary book ... Metronome might well be a brave new world created by Tom Watson, as insightful and as premonitory as Orwell's 1984 * Litro * A book about guilt, new beginnings, making mistakes or decisions, because of being forced by circumstances. The betrayal by someone the mc thought she could trust, and her struggle with sensing this from the beginning, and the not knowing if she should trust.

The couple's environment while beautiful is a little too harsh for easy living, and the couple's personalities are contrasting rather than complimentary: Tom Watson’s debut Metronome is a surreal survival story with a bit of a dystopian edge. Set on an island (or is it?) it is for the most part a claustrophobic and disturbing two hander that requires readers to buy into a real sense of wrongness before then upping the stakes.

You are going to want to google Can Sheep Actually Swim? very soon after starting this book, so I've saved you some time. The situation becomes a crisis when no one appears after the 12 years to rescue them. At the same time, a lone sheep appears and settles in to graze on their lands. Whitney is insistent that it is all a test to prove their repentance. Aina is meanwhile suspicious that they are not on an island at all (i.e. Can sheep swim? See above) and that the outside society has collapsed and no one is coming. Both of them yearn for their son from whom they were separated, and both are keeping secrets from each other. Aina begins to form a plan of escape (due to a small timing defect in the dispensing machine) but events become even more dramatic when signs of further human life appear. Tom Watson has crafted a novel which is replete with tension and barely expressed emotions. The emotional and relationship consequences of exile and isolation on two people whose initial actions led to their exile for twelve years are brought to life through the sparse dialogue between Whitney and Aina where so much is left unsaid. Aina’s growing understanding that Whitney has consistently misled her is brilliantly realised as is her subsequent sense of betrayal and disillusion. In his debut novel, Tom Watson seems less interested in the wider political and social reality of his world than in the mundane detail of the characters’ lives and the bleakness of the landscape they inhabit, the emotional standoff that exists between them as a result of the traumatic severing of their previous existence. His use of language is nuanced and sensitive, with landscape writing especially a sensory highlight. His imagining of the sparse and chilly beauty of the island, together with the exiles’ thwarted attempts to make creative sense of both their fate and their surroundings, should make for an engrossing and memorable reading experience.