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

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In other ways, I thought it was representative of the human condition, the tyranny of a government and a set of laws around bodily autonomy and free will. Daily life is controlled by the distribution of pills necessary for survival on a planet damaged by some unspecified blight. I thought it was interesting that their names weren’t immediately obvious as to who was who, just removed enough from perhaps a more familiar set of names.

Stylish and thoughtful … The eerie claustrophobia of the setting will stay with the reader for a long while. In the story, “yan tan tethera methera pip” was said during some challenging situations, so I assumed it’s a kind of mantra for relaxing … but I was not expecting a Celtic counting system!Taut, unsettling and so completely charged with both tension and emotion , I found myself captivated by Metronome . Me-tro-nome, the use of it in musical terms (Aina is a pianist with a mathematical brain, cunning and in control of her own life) and in timekeeping. In Metronome, determination exposes any flaws or attributes that Whitney and Aina (which means always) might have.

As she comes to grips with the decisions that haunt her past, she realises her biggest choice is yet to come. Metronome is a tense dystopian slow-burn thriller, set in the unspecified (but presumably near) future. In terms of debuts, I thoroughly enjoyed Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex, and Victoria Park by Gemma Reeves is exquisite. Does he like what’s going on in the world (at the time of writing Metronome it was the pandemic; at the time of writing this review, there is war in the Ukraine).

The claustrophobic feel of two people spending all of their time together, with no other human company is chilling, and the little niggles of doubt and blame between them, that grow with an intensity throughout is impeccably handled. This author is so talented, the way that the relationship between Aina and Whitney chop and change throughout the novel is done so very well. One could argue that the novel does not transport the reader as originally intended as these matters are happening on our doorstep. There is the significance of the number twelve, too, the years they serve on the island as punishment.

As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Aina and Whitney have spent 12 years in exile on a croft on a desolate island for committing a crime together: to survive here, they have to take a pill every few hours.There is trekking, hiking, mapping, swimming, sailing, boating, farming, crofting – down to cutting peat ­– to stimulate our senses. A much-used word, karma is loosely understood as a system of checks and balances in our lives, of good actions and bad deeds, of good thoughts and bad intentions.

The two central characters are compelling, if not overly so - I took a long while to connect with them, to be honest, and their frayed relationship. Whitney and Aina have been sentenced to exile on a remote island, for the crime of concealing a pregnancy. 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. Their prison does not have any locks or barred windows, but a house on an island and a lot of ocean… ah, and one more thing: every 8 hours they have to take a pill.However, I would have appreciated more details about the outside world and what events lead to their situation going dark. These won’t be for everyone, but in terms of how they both managed family and writing while juggling a host of other commitments, they both gave me real impetus. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a US Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes.