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

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One could argue that the novel does not transport the reader as originally intended as these matters are happening on our doorstep. They are nearing the end of their 12-year sentence but supply drops stopped a few years ago and their 'Warden' no longer answers their radio messages. According to Wille, fire speeds things up for example, water slows things down; air gives focus and earth opens out. This really didn’t: the level of explanation is well maintained, the resolution shocked and gripped me (while also being somehow predictable from the first few pages).

Metronome’s cover image shows something not too dissimilar to Hemingway’s iceberg theory: ‘Like an iceberg, the surface of the story, what is revealed to the reader, should be barely anything compared to what lies beneath. I enjoyed the story and was really intrigued with it although I would have liked a little more world building to tell me about the world outside the island. Metronome was a BBC Radio 2 Between the Covers book club selection for the summer of 2022 and you can see the list of 14 selections here. Stylish and thoughtful … The eerie claustrophobia of the setting will stay with the reader for a long while. It is also the number of sections on a clock face, months of the year, days of Christmas, apostles, stations of the cross, inches in a foot, face cards in a deck, signs of the zodiac, stages of the hero’s journey—twelve stations of the moon and sun, stages of life .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. Survival on ‘The Limits ’ is key, based on 8-hourly pills from a timed clock dispensary that inadvertently tether them both to the island, to each other, their quest for freedom, and what they do to achieve it. Employing Aina’s analytical brain, it is ubiquitous, represents a dozen, is an unusually highly composite number, divisible by itself, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. Afterwards, I sat in stunned silence for about five minutes, then went down a rabbit hole looking up “yan tan tethera”, discovering that’s it’s an ancient method of sheep-counting traditionally employed by shepherds in the North of England. By taking the decision to have a child without obtaining official permission, Whitney and Aina are breaking the law.

It is mysterious, intriguing, has more than a hint of the dystopian and examines the very depth of humanity which ticks a lot of boxes. The sudden appearance of a token sheep also throws things off kilter where, as readers, we are left pondering its significance. What my proof copy didn’t tell me is that Metronome is featured in the next BBC2 ‘Between The Covers’ series. Tom Watson is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, where he was the recipient of the Curtis Brown Prize in memory of Giles Gordon. The eventual focus on parenthood meant this reminded me a lot of The Road, and there were also shades of The Water Cure and Doggerland (though, thankfully, the dual protagonists ensure a less overly male atmosphere).This is a mesmerising and engrossing tale - well-drawn characters and location with an intriguing and unique storyline makes this an excellent debut novel - 9/10.

At various points I could see very different scenarios, and I worried that the back half: the explanation and possible resolution, would underwhelm or disappoint. There are hints of a changed world, will they choose to leave and find out what’s out there, is there anything? 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 take for survival every eight hours. Many assumptions have been made on the part of the reader, and to full effect – including the accuracy of the pill-dispensing clock, their trust in the pills doing their job, Aina’s watch telling the right time, keeping time, Whitney’s faith in the Warden who will offer them parole, and that certain supplies haven’t run out.The plot is very character-focussed, told from the perspective of Aina, and we are rooting for her throughout the story, with occasional chapters dedicated to (vaguely) explaining what happened before to cause them to have been exiled. 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. It’s best to go in knowing very little, because Watson’s intricately layered novel reveals its secrets slowly and it is all the more brilliant for it.

How so much can happen and how the build-up of tension can be so tangible, with only so little elements to use. What matters most is that we are fully invested in Aina and Whitney and anything or anyone else that crosses their path. Beautifully in fact, as we are literally exposed to the elements, so cleverly crafted in this debut novel. There is trekking, hiking, mapping, swimming, sailing, boating, farming, crofting – down to cutting peat ­– to stimulate our senses. It was almost like Watson didn't have the confidence to commit to an ending and left it in the hands of the reader.

In Whitney and Aina, Watson has created a couple whose secrets threaten both their present and their future and whose emotional limits are test.