From the Purchased Pile: I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid.

Publication Date: Available Now from Text Publishing

Source: Purchased Copy (Waterstones Piccadilly)

You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this deeply suspenseful and irresistibly unnerving debut novel, a man and his girlfriend are on their way to a secluded farm. When the two take an unexpected detour, she is left stranded in a deserted high school, wondering if there is any escape at all. What follows is a twisted unraveling that will haunt you long after the last page is turned.

I finished “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” then I went back to the beginning and read it again.
You will want to read this book more than once. Or you’ll want to hide it in the depths of the earth never to be seen again. Probably won’t be that much inbetween those two things and the range of reviews would seem to back me on this.

Me? I’m going to tell everyone I know to read this book then read it again.

It scared the living crap out of me but no, don’t ask. Iain Reid has written, in my humble opinion, a masterclass in unsettling the reader without them being able to put their finger on why exactly. It has a surreal, emotional and deeply disturbing vibe that starts on the first page then builds to a crescendo of turmoil at the end followed by a “Wait. No just wait a minute. What the all heck did I just read? Wait what now?” Then a sudden dawning of realisation as it settles and a desperate urge to go back to the start and see it with new eyes. I did that. I was just as haunted the second time round but for utterly different reasons.

Brilliantly constructed, absolutely gorgeous use of language, those little things that make you shiver, glance behind you, wonder what that noise was coming from the other room and when the blurb says “you will be afraid but you won’t know why” that is exactly it. That right there.

It is incredibly difficult to review. Its a road trip for sure, one hell of a ride. Its like Stephen King dropped acid then wrote a story about a girl who is not sure whether she wants to break up with her boyfriend or not. And very much like King when he’s bang on the money, you won’t know what you are getting until you get there and when you DO get there everything you thought you knew will be turned on its head. That might get over some of the sense of it. Maybe. You should just read it.

Iain Reid has his own unique writing style to be sure that feeds into the story being told perfectly, there is an intensity of prose, an intuitive sense of things, it shines through and then sucks you into a vortex of impossible to describe, erm, things. Life is in here, a twist of life, some insightful commentary on how we all see things, how human interaction works. Or does not. Or could. Or something.

Oh yes I’m not making sense – but at the very heart of this one is one thing that I can’t talk about without spoiling where this possibly ill fated couple end up. So really you probably just need to decide to read it. Or not. I would. I’m probably going to again because I’m sure I’ve missed nuances. I’m sure actually that I missed a lot of things. Only lets just see if I can sleep first. I doubt it. I’m still a little afraid to be honest…

I’m Thinking of Ending Things will quite definitively not be for everyone. But it was absolutely for me. And therefore I can’t do anything other than highly recommend it.

I’ll be here if you need to talk once you are done…..

You can follow the author on Twitter HERE

You can purchase “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” if you clickety click right HERE

(Or visit your local bookshop!)

Happy Reading!