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

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This book really emphasises the two types of people - those who accept what is, and those who try to chang their situation. The events move along at a good pace - for life on an exile island, and soon all is revealed to be not as we, or they, were lead to believe.

And these pills? Do they really need them to survive? And what exactly has happened that makes them need them? She is haunted by the loss of a child, the fear of losing another child, the endlessness and despair of not knowing what happened to her son.... The writingstyle is very atmospehric, and beautiful. And the claustrophobic feelings and thoughts that go with exile were very well portrayed! Taut, unsettling and so completely charged with both tension and emotion, I found myself captivated by Metronome. I loved the clarity of its vision and the clean intensity of its prose, and I know that its vivid characters and the bleak, brutal beauty of the world they inhabit will haunt my dreams for a long time now, in the absolute best of ways -- Naomi Ishiguro

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Tom Watson has conjured a relationship corroded by compromise and capitulation, and worked it into an extraordinary love story - or rather, a story of what love looks like when affection and trust have fallen away * The Times * This is dystopian fiction at its best. Just like the great Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale, this author doesn't inform the reader of how the world becomes what it is in this story. It takes some time before we learn what crime Aina and Whitney are guilty of, and when we realise, we see the horror that the world has become, it's so clever and so compelling, and nothing is as expected. And the exile to an island, in the middle of God knows where, surrounded by only ocean..... Trying to stay afloat trying to survive, whilst everything you thought to be true seems to be a lie. Taking pills, relying on hear-say, or to take a chance and rely on your guttfeeling...?

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. Then one day, a sheep arrives on the island having swum from somewhere. But can sheep swim? Where and how did it get here? That strange event starts off a chain of thoughts which spirals out of control. Metronome takes you on the journey down that chain and what a journey it is. The setting feels very closed off and limited as we only see the immediate area through their eyes. We see what they do which is not much at all. I played a game as a child once where you could only see two cms around you at any one time and you had to navigate blindly really through a maze. This feels like that and I recalled the feeling of frustration, fear, the unknown and everything the characters must be feeling. Second, it’s also a dystopian vision of the world that seems somehow really plausible. I’ve read a lot of near-future dystopias in the last few years. A lot feed on our anxieties about climate change in some way. This does so too, but less obviously, and it doesn’t over explain how we got to this place. We’re just there.

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If you like your books dark, dystopian and creepy, and you don’t mind not knowing exactly what is going on, then you’ll love this one. Brilliant stuff. Echoes of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

At first, the author uses his elegant prose to create the island setting and the characters. Unfortunately, the writing never really develops its full potential.Atmospheric ... Watson's use of language is nuanced and sensitive, with landscape writing especially a sensory highlight * Guardian * A book about guilt, new beginnings, making mistakes or decisions, because of being forced by circumstances. The betrayal by someone the mc thought she could trust, and her struggle with sensing this from the beginning, and the not knowing if she should trust.

Stylish and thoughtful … The eerie claustrophobia of the setting will stay with the reader for a long while.' Literary Review This seven-part series, designed to bring the nation together by sharing the enjoyment of reading, will take the same format as before. In each episode, Sara’s book group of four famous guests will bring along their own book of choice and also discuss a newly published book. The seven selected books are revealed below. You never really learn anything about the outside society so you have to just imagine a future population controlled civilization also subject to the poisonous effects of climate change. That this society also takes the time and trouble to exile people to isolated locations but still provide resources and communications becomes a bit of a stretch. Also the idea that people would wait 12 years before doing something further about their situation is also unbelievable. It is a first novel though, and it did build suspense and drama effectively towards the end.More exciting news for another of our 2016 shortlistees: Tom Watson’s debut novel, Metronome, will be published by Bloomsbury in spring 2022.