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

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Not only will they be exiled to a croft on a remote island, but Whitney must choose between Aina and Maxime, opting to let Maxime be taken.

The elegant cover was what drew me to the book, and it was such an engaging and, at times, challenging piece of speculative fiction.Not dismissing an element of brainwashing, one could argue whether they actually live on an island – after the discovery of ‘a spine.

Metronome is a deeply eerie post-apocalpytic tale that follows two people trapped on a remote island, as a punishment for some unmentioned crime. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The terminology suggests some Danish or Scandinavian connection; Viking-esque, given Aina’s surname Ollasson.Metronome is an addictive and hugely compelling novel, I was totally enraptured by the characters and the plot. Is the freedom for themselves or for someone else; do you give up your freedom for the sake of another? As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets. Writing consultant and ex publisher Andrew Wille champions a writing concept based on the use of elements, not only as physical external forces but tools that can equally be used to enhance writing itself. I love the idea of writing every day, and right now I’m in a phase where I’m rising early and trying to meet a word count before the house awakes.

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. Maybe this says something about Watson’s own life, why he was compelled to tell this particular story. According to Wille, fire speeds things up for example, water slows things down; air gives focus and earth opens out.Watson creating this island life in metaphor, analogy, symbolism and imagery is all the more creepy if rooted in today’s reality.

They have built a life for themselves on the island, planting seeds and farming the land which surrounds the croft they sleep in. There will be readers who respond so strongly to Watson’s transparent prose, to the curiously lulling strangeness of his world, that they can set aside the trivial matter of cause and effect. I loved the idea of it when I read the blurb, and ny reading pal told me to talk to her about it when I was finished as she’d recently read it. For a novel depicting twelve years’ isolation for two people on an island, it can read like a veritable a-z of underlying themes such as: adversity, attraction, challenge, climate change, communication, companionship, construction, control, death, destruction, determination, distraction, distance, equality, existence, family, fear, health, human hunger, intimacy, lies, love, oppression, pleasure, pressure, rebellion, relationships, revenge, sacrifice, safety, scams, secrets, solitude, synchronicity, time, etc. How did you decide which dystopian elements to include, and was it difficult to rein in your imagination once you got started?His debut novel, Metronome, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and his short fiction has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and awarded runner-up for the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize. You can find me reading mostly fiction (especially dystopian stories and climate fiction), some memoirs, and a tiny bit of poetry. His debut novel, Metronome , was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and his short fiction has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and awarded runner-up for the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize. They can stay safe by taking a pill every 8 hours, dispensed by an unassailable clock in the croft which releases one pill each, with a 3-minute window, on presentation of a thumbprint.