Exiled to a remote island for 12 years, Aina and Whitney are tethered to a croft by the pills they need to take in order to breathe safely since the air in the north has become polluted by toxic bacteria from melting tundra in Siberia. The warden has stopped delivering their annual supply drops, and shipwrecks have been washing up on their shore in his wake.
Whitney is convinced that the Warden will arrive soon as they are due for parole, but Aina is convinced that there is something wrong. In the opening pages the arrival of a sheep starts her wondering whether their island might actually be a peninsular, and she starts to calculate the ways in which she might escape.
Tom Watson is a Creative Writing graduate (rather than the former Labour Deputy Leader) and this is an incredible first novel. Comparisons to Emily St John Mandel and Megan Hunter, and praise from Naomi Ishiguro and Emma Stonex set the bar very high, but every sentence is perfect, and the bar is met. Even from the blurb there are so many questions raised and the gradual reveal of the answers to those questions is sublimely done.
I’m always drawn to apocalyptic and dystopian novels; books set in an unspecified future where the protagonists are dealing with only slight exaggerations of our present, but Metronome isn’t really about the future: it’s about a relationship in exile, and Aina and Whitney are so well drawn. I don’t want to say too much more – any plot detail above is in the blurb or the opening pages and I enjoyed the reading so much that I wouldn’t want to spoil any of it for anybody.
What I would like is to hear from any other readers once you’ve finished it – pop in on a Wednesday, ask for Paul and tell me what you thought as I’d love to talk about it!
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