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A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better

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Suffice to say that this is a novel of expertly woven tension and frightening glimpses into the mind of the deranged other; a worthy successor to Wood’s excellent second novel, 2015’s The Ecliptic.

Danny's father is a complex character, not just a pantomime villain, and the way things play out seems realistic. Dan listens to the cassette, read by Maxine, as they travel north towards the TV studio, where Dan’s been promised a look around the set and the chance to meet the stars. As we focus more and more on Fran, he emerges as a highly complex and frightening figure: good-looking, persuasive and larger than life. And all this time, Maxine's voice is with him in the headphones of the player, telling a dark fairy tale that will become an anchor that will not allow the boy to fall into the depths of madness. His third book A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better (2018) was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature and the CWA Gold Dagger Award.

Daniel is obsessed with the TV series, and it is only because of her son’s fixation with anything Artifex, that his mother, Kath, allows Fran to take Daniel on this trip to see the film-set and meet the actors.

Morley’s Elmet was a surprise Booker nomination last year, and hopefully this might make next Tuesday’s longlist. But with every passing mile, the layers of Fran's mendacity and desperation are exposed, pushing him to acts of violence that will define the rest of his son's life. Meanwhile, the horror is heightened by the fact that we see all this through a child’s eyes: as if in some terrifying pantomime, we want to scream at Daniel to do something, anything – and then remember that he is only a boy. Wood takes the passing, shabby details of mundane landscapes and makes them jitter and throb with yearning and menace.His third book, A STATION ON THE PATH TO SOMEWHERE BETTER (2018), was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the European Union Prize for Literature.

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