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

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There's This author is so talented, the way that the relationship between Aina and Whitney chop and change throughout the novel is done so very well.

Katherine Mansfield also combines the senses and elements in her ‘Voices Of The Air’ poem using air, sound, sea, wind and music, ‘sighs’, ‘double notes’ and double basses, that appear in ‘rare’ moments. The tension between the two characters and the scenery is well described and the taut novel disorientates without ever being perplexing. There is something very scary about the prospect of that sort of isolation and the expanse of time to fill and as Whitney and Aina’s daily life is described to us we understand that they find comfort in the routines. Except we do not know if she is alone, what lunch consisted of, what kind of dishes they are and how many, where the sink is, where she is, or what happened before. And according to the residents of the Japanese island of Okinawa - the world's longest-living people - finding it is the key to a longer and more fulfilled life.

At times dystopian, at others speculative fiction with a dollop of suspense thriller, this is an exceptional read. The claustrophobic feel of two people spending all of their time together, with no other human company is chilling, and the little niggles of doubt and blame between them, that grow with an intensity throughout is impeccably handled. From the description is sounded spooky, adrenaline-rushing, and totally captivating – it did not disappoint! Whitney and Aina come to represent opposing views on their sentence, on the pills, where one is determined to pass this last test to be set free and the other is convinced no-one is coming to help them.

There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. The rhythm of the book is what struck me -- Kate Bottley --This text refers to the paperback edition. In Whitney and Aina, Watson has created a couple whose secrets threaten both their present and their future and whose emotional limits are test.There is no doubting Watson’s talent at the sentence level, but his lack of rigour around core ideas left me frustrated and unconvinced. You can find me reading mostly fiction (especially dystopian stories and climate fiction), some memoirs, and a tiny bit of poetry. As the story unfolds the author offers the reader snippets of information - the protagonists are exiled, the government introduced hierarchical rules regarding procreation - clearly echoing 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale.