Author(s): Tom Watson

Novel | Crime and Thriller | Read our reviews! | Dystopia, Science Fiction and Fantasy

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. They've kept busy Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps but something is not right. Shipwrecks have begun washing up, and their supply drops have stopped. And on the day they're meant to be collected for parole, the Warden does not come. Instead there's a sheep. But sheep can't swim - As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets. And if he's been keeping secrets, maybe she should too.

Convinced they've been abandoned, she starts investigating ways she might escape. As she comes to grips with the decisions that haunt her past, she realises her biggest choice is yet to come.

'Imagined with an impressively detailed three-dimensional solidity' Sunday Times 

'Stylish and thoughtful ... The eerie claustrophobia of the setting will stay with the reader for a long while.' Literary Review

'Unputdownable ... An extraordinary book ...as insightful and as  premonitory as Orwell's 1984' Litro

 'A great debut novel that tells a story of survival and mistrust with skill and craft' Storgy

 'Taut, unsettling and so completely charged with both tension and emotion' Naomi Ishiguro 'With echoes of Emily St John Mandel and Megan Hunter' Elizabeth Macneal

'Tense, taut and absorbing' Gemma Reeves

'As moving as it is chilling' Emma Stonex Reader 

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

With echoes of Emily St John Mandel and Megan Hunter, this haunting literary thriller is about survival, loss and the binds that unite and break us. Chilling, eerie and powerful -- Elizabeth Macneal

A pure, tender, terrifying vision that had me gripped to its beat from the first page. Cleverly imagined and beautifully creepy, it's a story as moving as it is chilling -- Emma Stonex

Echoes the likes of Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven ... A compellingly crafted debut, rich in tension and atmosphere * Living Magazine *

Imagined with an impressively detailed three-dimensional solidity * Sunday Times *

Stylish and thoughtful ... The setup is delicious ... A talented writer. The eerie claustrophobia of the setting will stay with the reader for a long while. The relationship between his characters is memorably, and often wittily, drawn * Literary Review *

A great debut novel that tells a story of survival and mistrust with skill and craft * Storgy *

Unputdownable ... An extraordinary book ... Metronome might well be a brave new world created by Tom Watson, as insightful and as premonitory as Orwell's 1984 * Litro *

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 *

Dystopian island drama that packs a punch ... A bold debut * Observer *

Atmospheric ... Watson's use of language is nuanced and sensitive, with landscape writing especially a sensory highlight * Guardian *

Author Biography: Tom Watson is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, where he was the recipient of the Curtis Brown Prize in memory of Giles Gordon. His debut novel, Metronome, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and his short fiction has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and awarded runner-up for the Sean O Faolain Prize. He lives in London.

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STELLA'S REVIEW:
It’s the near future and a couple are near the end of a twelve-year exile. The Warden is due to uplift them from their remote island prison where they have lived a subsistence existence reliant on yearly supply drops, what they scavenge from shipwrecks, and pills deposited at eight-hour intervals. The yearly supply drops have become non-existent. The Warden hasn’t shown up the last three years. Whitney sees this as a test — of their loyalty to the regime and their contrition. Aina is more doubtful —  increasingly suspicious of not only the Warden and the regime but also her husband. 'No one is coming' is the refrain that ebbs at the edges of her mind. The shipwrecks, which had become more frequent, have dwindled as they see fewer signs of any human behaviour. Yet when a yacht is pitched up on the Needles — a sharp range of rocks just off the coast — it is surprisingly rich with treasures and unsettlingly obvious that human inhabitants have been living on board recently. But where are they? Whitney is sure they have come on land. Aina is more puzzled by their lack of access to pills. How could they survive without them? And that brings us to the Pill Clock. Every eight hours, via identification by thumbprint technology, a pill is dispensed — one for Whitney and one for Aina. Without the medication, they will die, poisoned by the atmosphere. This is a climate hell — low on resources, crappy weather (a massive flood triggers chaos as well as a personal catastrophe), and bad air. The pill dispenser keeps them tethered to the croft and the patch on land they live on. They are controlled, even at a distance, by the schedule of the clock — by the prison sentence. As the day of their freedom comes and passes, the couple respond in opposing manners. Whitney’s concept of 'the test' is reinforced, while Aina is determined to unpick the doubts she harbours and the questions that bother her about the island. Is it really an island? If yes, where did the lone sheep come from and why is Whitney determined to keep her from exploring beyond a craggy range? This schism, in conjunction with an unexpected encounter, undermines their relationship and pulls them both back to an unbearable past. A past where breaking the rules — having a child without permission — resulted in their banishment, and Maxime, their son, taken by the state. It was an oppressive regime, where citizens toed the line, dobbing in others, hoping to remain unnoticed or to be socially rewarded. Yet saving your own skin in this conservative regime didn’t, you realise as the story unfolds, keep the wolf from the door — resources became scarce and the environment harsher. Whitney and Aina, completely isolated, know little, and as Aina makes a decision to leave, determined to find Maxime, it is unclear whether this will be her redemption or destruction. Tom Watson’s debut focuses on the tense relationship between the couple, their diverging perspectives, lack of trust in each other, and disintegrating grip on reality. Metronome is tightly drawn with the clockwork precision and logic of survival, balancing the emotional turmoil of love and betrayal in this remote atmospheric landscape.