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

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Much of the pleasure of my initial reading of this novel was driven by the desire to discover what had happened in the past and how the novel was going to end; consequently my reread was less satisfying. Not dismissing an element of brainwashing, one could argue whether they actually live on an island – after the discovery of ‘a spine. When their crime is discovered they become social outcasts, condemned to serve a 12-year sentence of exile on a remote island in the north. The pace and intensity increases as the story goes on, with an almost unbearable crescendo until the breathless last line. When a later event regarding the mainland is introduced, this is also skimmed over and I would have liked a little more speculation from the characters as to what had happened as well.

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. Sent there as punishment for committing a crime not initially revealed to us, they are confined by their reliance upon pills which are dispensed from a mysterious box on the wall every eight hours. Their punishment is made harder by the fact that toxic spores from the melting permafrost have been released into the atmosphere; anyone spending time in that part of the world must take prophylactic pills at eight-hour intervals to stay alive. The plot started to get lost somewhere around the middle though and only really regained its footing in the final third only to end with such disappointing ambiguity. The Goldsboro exclusive edition of "Empire of the Damned" by Jay Kristoff will feature block sprayed.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. The flashbacks in Metronome are drip-feeding information you're really keen to learn - in this case why Aina and Whitney ended up on the prison island - and the reveal fell flat for me, personally, as did the reveal of Whitney's long-held secret.

But the eight hour intervals between their life-saving pills doesn’t give them enough time to explore the island in its totality. Aina and Whitney are sentenced to 12 years banishment, for a crime that increasingly becomes apparent - they had an illegal child. The bleak description of their island was so well fleshed out that there was enough sense of place to satisfy me without having a map!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). But although the underlying mystery and sense of threat is enough to keep us engaged and turning pages, the narrative eventually becomes overreliant on the deliberate withholding of information. 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.