A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better

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There is a short passage, two thirds of the way through Benjamin Wood’s elegant and disturbing novel, in which Fran Hardesty, a man described as being perennially of “two weathers”, finally becomes his true self.

I really enjoyed Benjamin Wood's previous two novels, The Bellwether Revivals and The Ecliptic, but I think this is his best so far. No one is going to survive this story, and for a while I was sure Dan would be one of those who would perish at his father’s hands. The gentle, steady incline up the tension stakes was tempered with vulnerability and behind this is the allure of those earlier words.

The destination for their trip is Leeds, in particular the Yorkshire Television studios where the children’s TV series, The Artifex is being filmed. He was so serene it chilled me, as though this was his resting state, his factory setting, to be unburdened of the people he was meant to care about, each slow-grown relationship, each held aspiration, each great and small responsibility that makes a life worth living. Travelling well beyond his earlier fiction, Wood has produced a tour de force that marks his creative arrival. That line is one that Francis Hardesty tightrope-walks for the first half of the book, then falls off of spectacularly in the second half.

The first two thirds of this are a powerful depiction of the devastation caused when someone ‘flips their lid’. Part thriller, part painful reminiscence of severely ineffectual parenting, trauma, and lingering grief.From the outset the story has a sense of doom and tragedy as young Daniel takes a trip with the father, whom he has barely seen since he left the family years earlier, to his place of work, the Yorkshire TV studios in Leeds. Daniel is a huge fan and this trip is not only a long overdue chance to spend time with his father but it’s also an opportunity to visit the set and meet the stars of his favourite TV programme as Francis works on the show and has promised him a guided tour. The back cover of my proof of this doesn’t give much away: merely the names and relationship of our two protagonists, Francis and Daniel Hardesty, father and son, and the promise of a road trip that ends in an explosion of violence, which continues to haunt Daniel twenty years after the fact. Remarkably, his masterly handling of suspense (menacing revelations ratchet up relentlessly) is linked to a sensitive treatment of emotion, especially about parental betrayal and the long-term aftershocks of loss . This is not a light or an easy read and it's far more than a mere thriller though the tension mounts inexorably through the first part of the book.