ABOUT
THE BOOK

2020 Longlist

For twenty years, Daniel Hardesty has borne the emotional scars of a childhood trauma which he is powerless to undo, which leaves him no peace.

One August morning in 1995, the young Daniel and his estranged father Francis – a character of ‘two weathers’, of irresistible charm and roiling self-pity set out on a road trip to the North that seems to represent a chance to salvage their relationship. They have one shared interest, The Artifex, a children’s TV drama for which Fran works on set, and Daniel has been promised special access to the studio. But with every passing mile, the layers of Fran’s mendacity and desperation are exposed, pushing him to acts of violence that will define the rest of his son’s life.

About the Author

Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in northwest England. His award-winning novels include The Bellwether Revival and The Ecliptic. A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature.

Librarian’s Comments

The author unfolds a powerful story of human duplicity as it presents itself to a child’s eye and is percepted synchronically and many years after the events take place. In this masterly amalgamation of genres (thriller-psychological novel/detective story), the traditional theme of fathers and sons is presented in a hauntingly unpredictable way. M. Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, Russia