BookJack talks about the novel by the English writer Benjamin Wood "Station on the way to where it is better", which was published by the "Phantom Press" publishing house. The main characters of the story are twelve-year-old Daniel and his father Fran. They go through the catastrophe together, but change in different ways after it - one takes its "dark side", the other tries to resist it.
Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in northwest England. He is the author of four novels. His debut The Bellwether Revivals (2012) was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won France's Prix du Roman Fnac.
If you, like the author of these lines, believe that there is no better way to distract yourself from your own (quite real) anxiety than to plunge headlong into someone else's anxiety, and even fictitious, then the novel by a young Englishman Benjamin Wood “Station on the way to where better ”is a very smart choice on hectic days. Calling this book reading comforting and easy will not turn one's tongue, but that power of involvement, drawing into another reality, with other fears, problems and rewards, which it provides, is in itself capable of serving the reader with some consolation.
The feeling of impending disaster begins to form in the novel from the very first page. Twelve-year-old Daniel, the son of divorced parents, is looking forward to the trip with his father to the TV studio, where he works as a carpenter, with such a fierce passion that even in the very force of his anticipation some vague threat is read. The staccato is slowly growing: Daniel's father Fran Hardesty is a talented and clearly extraordinary person, however, completely untrustworthy. He lies in big and small things, he constantly gets stuck in history, and his upcoming trip with his son gives Daniel's mother the worst forebodings. And although at first everything goes smoothly (almost for the first time in her life, Fran arrives for her son without delay), very quickly the trip turns into a disaster - at first a local one, and then a global, irreversible and truly terrible one.
In principle, a cursory reading of "Station on the way to where it is better" could be considered another novel about trauma: the events that start from the moment little Daniel sits in his father's old Volvo, change his whole future life, turning a quiet well-read boy in the hardest, incurable, in essence, neurotic. However, in a strange way, this first, obvious reading turns out to be part-time and the most incomplete and imprecise. In reality, Benjamin Wood's novel is primarily a twisted, inside-out and cynically twisted story of personal growth, or, if you will, the search for your true self.
The protagonist of the novel, actually Fran Hardesty (it is he, not Daniel, who is the real center of the story), handsome, capable, compulsive, always fluctuates between two poles - icy indifference to others on the one hand and awkward attempts to be nice to them on the other, between detached cruelty and a desire to do everything right (Daniel's mother says that Fran has "two weather"). Society expects Fran to meet certain behavioral standards; he tries, fails, fails - and tries again. He keeps his "dark side" under control - until the moment when, seemingly, a mere trifle, a stupid misunderstanding and a banal impossibility to fulfill the promise given to his son, does not force him to make the final choice in favor of darkness. And this choice - disastrous and bloody - paradoxically, even if not for long, makes Fran, if not happy, then harmonious and whole. The monster inside him fully accepts himself, the sociopath spreads his dark wings - and finds peace of mind. “You weren't like that before,” the ex-wife tells Fran. “I’m tired, perhaps, of my former self,” the hero replies to her, and in his voice there is a genuine, supreme freedom to shake off the burden of social conventions (including paternal love) and become, at last, myself.
However, the story of Fran and his transformation is not the only one in the novel by Benjamin Wood. It is set off by the story of an already grown-up Daniel, with horror seeing his father's sociopathic traits, forever locked in those terrible two days when his life broke in two, and at the same time looking for the strength to make a choice different from his father's. The third line, which sounds like a counterpoint to the two main ones, is, in fact, the plot of the series "The Wizard", which Daniel is raving about and on the shooting of which his father promises (and cannot) lead him. The fantastic story of a boy who befriends an alien looks like a kind of mirror projection of the story of Fran and his son - trust instead of betrayal, sympathy and understanding instead of alienation.
In other words, in the three branches of the novel, essentially one and the same drama is played out in three different ways - the drama of the responsibility of an adult for his actions. Fran's betrayal and defection, the unconditional loyalty of the alien from the series and the agonizing uncertainty of Dan torn between the two poles - all three possibilities lead to each other in the pages of Wood's novel a tense, painful, not always comfortable for the reader, and at the same time encouraging and enriching dialogue. The choice of the side of evil, which at first seems so organic, alluring and inevitable, turns out to be not the only one. Evil, including the evil in oneself, can and must be resisted, and although the struggle does not promise to be simple and pleasant, victory in it is, in principle, achievable.
This article was sponosred by Ken Haraguchi
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