A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better

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Whilst I appreciate that the story doesn’t end at the key event, but explores the aftermath and effect on our narrator’s life, the tone changed, morphing into a more prosaic and factual recount of many years. It was at the end of the chapter, where Wood takes a huge risk in the writing and breaks a well-known rule…never tell the reader what is going to happen at the start of the story… I read the words that end chapter one; As we drove off, [Mum] was smiling at herself, a limp hand spread across her heart. In it, Daniel thinks back to 1995, when he was twelve years old, and went on a road trip with his estranged father, the dishonest, womanising, yet charming Fran. But instead, Daniel becomes party to a real-life horror show that his young mind, years later, has trouble understanding. The gentle, steady incline up the tension stakes was tempered with vulnerability and behind this is the allure of those earlier words.

Tony and Susan: путешествие с папой, которое так неплохо начиналось и сулило двенадцатилетнему герою множество радостных событий, превращается в золотую жилу для психотерапевтов.For twenty years, Daniel Hardesty has lived with the emotional scars of a childhood trauma which he is powerless to undo. The book is a tremendous achievement, an unputdownable domestic thriller that is also subtle and moving . The small group of characters, Daniel and his parents, his grandparents, and his father’s work acquaintances are wonderfully well drawn and play a large part in making the story so readable. I understood that he had finished being my father, as he had finished being a husband, and a stage carpenter, and painter-decorator, and a council maintenance worker, and a labourer, and a tomato picker, and a student, and a sheep farmer, and a son. 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.

It is all the little touches of mundanity within the drama of the narrative that keep it believable. Slowly, the author reveals the relationship between the characters and unveils the father's erratic, unreliable and unpredictable personality. He is Albert, walking through the normal world after experiencing a totally different, frightening, scarring perspective on it. Until that dismal week in August, when every plan he made was an attempt to cancel every word he spoke was a version or lie, I believed my father was a good man, someone whose blood was fit to share.

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.

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. W]e soon find out in this chilling and haunting portrayal about violence and love, some emotional scars cannot be undone. The journey starts out with high hopes but soon descends into a nightmare culminating in a series of terrible crimes.

Up to this point, Fran has been one of those ruthless, charming men who know what they want, moment to moment, but have no big picture.