A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better

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I rarely come back to books once I’ve decided against them, but occasionally my instincts tell me to give something another chance. I have a ridiculous amount of books sat on my bookshelves just patiently waiting to be read and I thought that this may be the perfect opportunity to finally delve into them. If it hadn't had been for Europa Editions publishing this, I most likely would've never come across his work. A novel of expertly woven tension and frightening glimpses into the mind of the deranged other’ … Benjamin Wood. In particular, Daniel’s love of The Artifex – and his reliance on an audiobook of the story during the trip – acts as an anchor during scenes that are otherwise hard to endure.

The main character tells the story of his childhood into adulthood as he reflects on how he manages the memories that no one would wish for. What I got was, indeed, dark, but there is no question of redemption or forgiveness in A Station On the Path… In Francis Hardesty, a man whose temper, capacity for manipulation, and sense of entitlement drive him ever further towards acts of intimidation and murder, Benjamin Wood has created the scariest literary father since Daddy, of Fiona Mozley’s Elmet, or Martin Alveston of My Absolute Darling.Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. There’s a final section where we see Daniel as an adult, with a beloved partner, and realise that the book has been driving, all along, towards the question of whether he can bear to be a father, whether it is irresponsible for him to taint a child with the bloodline of a mass murderer. This is a well-written tale, which is full of foreboding, as you know from the beginning that something terrible is going to happen, and yet you can't help hope, like Daniel, that it will be averted.

Since making the critics stand to attention with the narrative force of first The Bellwether Revivals then The Ecliptic , Benjamin Wood has been very much a novelist to watch. As his story unfolds, you don't really find the suspense that is promised on the cover, but more of a sadness for him. There were other plot choices that I felt hadn’t been made the most of - for example, scattered throughout the story were excerpts from a children’s book, and whilst they had a literal place in the plot, I hoped the author would make more of them - there are some core similarities between our narrator’s story and that of this other book, but I hoped that would be explored in more detail - instead, it seemed to suddenly cut off towards the end, as though the author wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that strand.Whether he does it because of deep-seated psychotic rage, a sense of entitlement, a combination of the two, or something else entirely isn’t ever made clear, and doesn’t really need to be. Francis is described as being two people; the gentle charmer and the distant, cruel man, his ex-wife describes him as being ‘two-weathers’ and you never quite know which one is closest to the surface. As the novel ends, the implication is that the real achievement is to learn how to live with inevitable failure – as father, as husband, as man – and have the strength of character to try again, to fail again, to fail better. It's a strange tale but really fitted in with the rest of the narrative rather than being distracting.