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

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Finally, when their 12-year parole is due, the Warden does not appear as expected and cannot be contacted via the radio.

Is it a protest of sorts, in which fictionalising “transports to other places and other lives” (Amanda Saint). We are told that Aina and Whitney have been exiled to an island for having a child without their country’s legal permission. In the way Gormley chose those precise positions and locations at the University – what does that tell us – Watson as a verbal artist, places his characters where he chooses. The sense of beauty of the island’s rugged landscape becomes lost with everyday living, time, and experience. Interesting then that Watson’s proof title for the book was ‘Not All that Is Hidden is Lost’ referencing the Hemingway theory again, where hidden could be taken to mean the future and lost being loss in a physical and emotional way.As it is, with omniscience at play, Watson uses the idea of funnelling his information from the broadest possible view, zooming down to the specific minutiae – and out again. 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. 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. 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).

Whitney and Aina were sent to remote island to carry out a prison sentence for raising a child without governmental consent. In Metronome, determination exposes any flaws or attributes that Whitney and Aina (which means always) might have. They've kept busy – Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps – but something is not right. The character list is sparse but the two protagonists are so well realised and at times both oddly quite relatable, despite their extraordinary circumstances. 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.This is an example of a great synopsis that really gives a sense of the plot: unexplained events, suspicion within a marriage, and curiosity about what else might be out there.

As both characters have lots of secrets that they keep to themselves throughout the novel and we don't ever really get to understand what they all are. There is the significance of the number twelve, too, the years they serve on the island as punishment. The location is not exactly specified but certain factors (they live in a croft (a Scottish farm dwelling), shipwrecks often have Nordic names, the use of an ancient Celtic counting system, a nearby permafrost indicates a northern locale, etc.

In the same way The Hunger Games’ Katniss has an idea to swallow poisonous berries to create an equality so there are no survivors, it shows not only her character but her lateral thinking and intelligence. It was interesting to find out that their crime was to go against the governments rules over having a baby. 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. 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.

I have fully crafted a 3d Revolving island in my head where I can see characters arriving and living on the island. 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.None of the characters had anything likeable about them, leaving me feeling strangely remote from the story. Most of the questions never got answered but I became so engrossed in their present that this didn’t matter. According to Wille, fire speeds things up for example, water slows things down; air gives focus and earth opens out. 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. There are passages that made me take such a deep breath, he describes the simple things, such as a candle being snuffed out with such care and precision - I could almost smell the molten wax as the flame fluttered and died.