Metronome by Tom Watson

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, boom

Metronome is a fine piece of dystopian fiction - but also a book that leaves a lot to be desired and seems to be stuck somewhere between Margaret Atwoods’ The Handmaid’s Tale and Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall.

Set on a remote (and cold and windy) island, Metronome chronicles the life of Whitney and Aina towards the expected end of their 12 year exile. Having been banished from their middle class life because they had an unauthorized child, they are forced to live alone in a small cottage in the middle of a harsh landscape, trying to live off the land with their only connections to the outside world a machine that regularly disposed a live-saving pill (for environmental degradation means that they would quickly perish without their regular medication), very infrequent supply drops and radio messages from a warden, and the occasional flotsam hitting ending up on the shore. With no news from the warden for a very long time, Whitney and Aina nevertheless hope for their promised release from the island, but when the day comes and nobody shows up to take them off the island, the couple begin to alternate between irrational hope and despair and the uncertainty over the fate of their child further adds to their anxiety and their growing conflict. Tensions rise further, as a ship wreck strands on their island and they discover that they are no longer alone.

Metronome shines where Whatson describes the dynamic between the two islanders. Every relationship would probably be stretched beyond the breaking point by 12 years of solitude, but Whatson creates additional tension between Whitney and Aila by their very different ways of dealing with the loss of their child and their hope for a release from their exile. His descriptions of the harsh landscape and hard life on the island makes for a solid read and allows the reader to feel the despair that Whitney and Aila must be feeling during their banishment and particularly is their hope of release begins to fade.

Towards the end of the book, Metronome additionally takes on the suspense and pace of a thriller: With new arrivals on the island and a growing sense of mistrust and outright hostility between Whitney and Aila, things clearly begin to spiral out of control, leaving the reading hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

Unfortunately, Metronome provides only the absolute minimum required to understand the backstory for the couple’s banishment: Through short flashbacks, we understand what their “crime” was. But while Whitney and Aila (as well as their friends) appear to have lived their lives mostly in “normal” times only to experience a sudden shift to an authoritarian regime strictly controlling the right to give birth, that background is only briefly woven is as a fact. We don’t learn anything about the nature of the regime, their motivations, or the possible reactions of people suddenly living under a new regime. Where Haushofer’s The Wall focuses entirely on the experience of being alone and stranded (on a mountain in the case of The Wall), most dystopian novels go to great lengths to analyze and to expose the underlying nature of an authoritarian regime. Not so in Tom Watson’s Metronome. Although Watson’s world was clearly inspired by Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale in setting up a regime that tightly controls procreation he fails to provide any context or explanation to his regime: Whitney and Aila and all their friends only appear as passive observers of a new situation with the right to give birth being tightly restricted without any additional insights into the dynamics giving rise to the new regime or the ways people respond (positively or negatively) to the change in power.

This lack of interest in the political landscape sketched in the background is a lost opportunity. Watson could have written Metronome without any background story. A couple being unfairly separated from their child and sent into exile would have made been enough of a back story to the book. But by teasing a more elaborate back story without ever disclosing much of the reality of their lives before banishment creates an unnecessary plot hole and robs Watson of the opportunity to formulate a clear viewpoint or to present a commentary on today’s society through the lens of an extreme articulation of current trends.

Metronome is quite alright - it is an engaging read. Yet, it feels as if Watson should have developed a much sharper focus. As a book solely about the couple’s exile, this book could have been even more powerful. Similarly, a thorough exploration of the factors leading to the societal changes ultimately driving the couples banishment could have been a good commentary of our times. As it stands, Metronome is neither fully here nor there. A solid book, but nothing more.