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

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It suggested a story of survival and hardship, a situation which require out-of-the-box thinking and the island setting itself promised a mystery to unravel.

The narrative ticktocks between the daily routine and the characters' inner thoughts, building tension as if towards a countdown however just like a metronome it simply becomes repetitive. Maybe this says something about Watson’s own life, why he was compelled to tell this particular story. 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.

Instead of leaving the story in a state of complete hopelessness, we are given some hope, which is almost immediately dashed by a 'deus ex machina' event and a scene, which may or may not be an illusion.

As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets.You can imagine the type of devastation on The Limits, after which everything is off kilter; is this dystopia meeting reality? In every chapter, paragraph and sentence we are invited to ask how we feel, how Watson has made us feel. There are certainly some compelling aspects to this novel in terms of depicting a dystopian future, but there were far too many questions left lingering about how this dystopian future came about.

The Goldsboro exclusive edition of "Empire of the Damned" by Jay Kristoff will feature block sprayed. Whitney and Aina were sent to remote island to carry out a prison sentence for raising a child without governmental consent. I came out of this book thinking I had mixed feelings about it, but it's starting to dawn on me that it's more an absence of any feeling at all. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere (in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living)’. They have built a life for themselves on the island, planting seeds and farming the land which surrounds the croft they sleep in.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. Except we do not know if she is alone, what lunch consisted of, what kind of dishes they are and how many, where the sink is, where she is, or what happened before. This is a dystopian near future, and if you don’t have a Permission To Conceive pass (issued after conception), then you’re not allowed to have a child. Wondering whether this is a hero story, how does one effectively define a hero – and can you be your own hero? And on her re-discovery of a hand-illustrated map, “the scale is all wrong, the distances too great.

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. The author seems to want to say something without saying it but not even hinting at what it might be.It was interesting to find out that their crime was to go against the governments rules over having a baby. The connection to the sculptures is not obvious at first but once the connection is made, coupled with Whitney’s own artworks, it is explosive. I also felt like I still needed to know more, the book finishes with an ambiguous ending that I wasn’t keen on and I did feel that the last part of the story was rather rushed. The specific episode discussing the book has not yet aired as of mid-May 2022, (NOTE: These are only available for listening in the United Kingdom) but you can watch for it in the list of Between the Covers episodes here.