From the first few pages I was lost in this novel, travelling in a strange land with Tom. He is driving from Belfast in Northern Ireland to Sunderland via the ferry to Scotland just before Christmas to collect his son Luke from the student house. Luke isn't well but it is just a cold and Tom and his partner Lorna, who stays home with their daughter, seem more worried than necessary. The reader knows there is a reason for this. Tom is confined to his car, outside the land is hidden under many feet of snow. On this solitary and claustrophobic journey he looks back, thinking about where he went wrong bringing up his other son Daniel. Tom is a photographer, mainly weddings, and his mind is tuned into different ways of seeing the same thing and the stories behind an image. David Park gives glimpses of the world outside the car, a kestrel, a man on skis, a jack-knifed lorry and of life inside the car, the music he listens to, the voice of the satnav and his telephone calls with home. The short novel gives a sense of the length of the journey. It is beautifully written, very moving and has a tension running through it. ( )

It doesn't matter who you are, becoming a parent is like travelling in a strange land. Tom and Lorna worry about their son Luke, a student at university in England. Luke has been stranded by a snowstorm cancelling travel plans, the only person left in his student digs at Christmas. Tom sets out to bring him home to Northern Ireland for the holidays. This novel records Tom's journey as he reflects on another son, Daniel and where he went wrong. Interrupting his thoughts the satnav voice regularly advises him to stay on the route. At one point he turns off the satnav in case the woman can hear his thoughts.

Park's intriguing, quiet story is beautifully written, where each apparently trivial thought and event has significance. ( )

Good book. Moving and well crafted. ( )

Sometimes you read a book and the affect it has on you is one of sheer astonishment...astonishment that the written word can be so powerful, so all consuming. David Park is one of the few authors who has the ability to retain my 100 percent attention and to transport me to a time and location that is profoundly sad but yet so lyrical. Tom is on a journey from Belfast to Sunderland to collect his unwell son Luke, and return him home to the family nest for Christmas. The weather is bad, airports are closed, and the journey involves Tom treacherously navigating a frozen landscape. In this desolate setting there is much time to reflect on family life, decisions taken, regrets examined and a haunted memory..."Something brushes a branch further up the slope and snow falls almost in slow motion. I know its Daniel even though I can't see him"....... It soon becomes clear that tragedy has befallen a family member and in the passing of those lonely snowbound hours the full extent and heart break of Daniel's story is laid bare.

What follows is a brilliant wretched story, that demands the reader's attention and sympathy, a sadness and situation that a family must accept and are powerless to change the inevitable ending. Let the words of David Park overwhelm you with their sparse and translucent prose...."The city looks like one of its sleeping homeless, huddled against the cold and layered in borrowed clothes"....."so I have to think things out on this journey but I don't know if the monochrome world I'm travelling through makes it easier or harder"....."life now ebbs and flows only as an inescapable welter of thought and image."....."Strange to be nursed by your child but I guess that reversal of roles is one that probably awaits us all down the road."....

A truly wonderful novel by an exceptional author, many thanks to the good people at netgalley and publisher Bloomsbury for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written. ( )