12/2/2023 0 Comments Strangeland podcast photos![]() Everyone smiling.’ Everyone always pretending to smile. He is a photographer by profession, family occasions mostly. He is an ordinary man and the catastrophe that has befallen his family, albeit awful, is ordinary, too. By the end of this winter’s tale about a journey, the reader has been on a journey too “Bringing up a child isn’t like driving this car where I have the voice to guide me and, despite the snow, the tracks of other cars to follow, signals to tell me when to stop and when to go … instead what you have is a kind of blizzard of conflicting and confusing ideas where, despite thinking you know the best direction to take, it soon becomes obvious that you’ve lost your way and the familiar landmarks … have disappeared in a white-out.” Some time ago, Tom made an excruciating choice as a father, one he concealed from his wife and which continues to torment him. Parenting is the strange land of the title. Tom journeys across a frozen white landscape, but his mind dwells on the hot dark hell in his heart. Who Daniel is and what became of him is connected to the horror at the top of the stairs. Another figure, Daniel, flits about in Tom’s blind spot. Luke is never far from his thoughts, nor is Lorna or daughter Lilly. There is the young woman on the car ferry who works as a runner on Game of Thrones, the taciturn attendants at service stations, the driver whose car veers off the road – Tom sits with her until an ambulance comes.Īlthough Tom travels alone, he carries passengers. Tom encounters various fellow travellers on the way. “It’s not a claim I’d ever make for myself but I think that, if I bring our son home, in my own mind it might just help – even tip the balance, however temporarily, in my favour.” He heads off on treacherous roads with only his CDs, the voice of the satnav, and his thoughts for company. As he sets out in his car, Tom’s wife, Lorna, tells him he’s a good father. Tom has to get Luke, his sick son, home from student digs in Sunderland to his family home in Belfast. ![]() There are three days to go until Christmas. To keep from dwelling on the room at the top of the stairs, Tom focuses on other duties. In the house are stairs that I know I shall have to climb.” What lies at the top of these stairs is the horror that David Park’s narrator, Tom, must learn to endure. ![]() In this strange realm, on the far shore of a frozen lake, there “stands a house. “I am entering the frozen land,” this short but breathtaking novel about parental heartache begins.
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