Staff Pick
I've been desperately awaiting a new Iain Reid book since I read his debut, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, in 2016. So when Foe was announced, I hoped with all my might that it would live up to my expectations. And it did! Foe is a tense, Black Mirror-esque plunge into a near future where the world looks like ours but feels indefinably off. Reid dragged me along with a creeping sense that something sinister was afoot, but my theories were wrong — and no one can make me thrilled to be wrong quite like Iain Reid. Recommended By Emily F., Powells.com
The first sign that something is wrong are the headlights: bright and with an unusual greenish tinge. Junior and Henrietta live together on an isolated farm and they never get visitors. This unexpected arrival, heralded by the piercing twin beams moving slowly up the path to their house, can't mean anything good. They're perfectly happy just the way they are and nothing ever needs to change... Once again, Iain Reid has proven himself to be the master of the subtlest of horrors. Foe is filled with stuttering oddities, mounting inconsistencies that are more deeply frightening than gore — commit to staying up all night and reading this book with all the lights on! Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com
Oh, Iain Reid, what have you done here? What is this, and why can't I stop reading it? Foe is a book that messed me up — it is messed up — but it's also startling and original. Junior and Hen are a married couple, comfortably settled in the countryside, away from everyone. Even though Junior says, "We don't get visitors. Not out here. We never have," they do indeed have a visitor one night, and there begins the bizarre odyssey of Foe. Commenting on marriage, home, gullibility, government insertion into private life, our reliance on the Internet, and the terrifying future of artificial intelligence, Foe is unbelievably creepy. Every page is boiling with tension and dread, but its appeal is so insidious, you are not going to stop reading this book until you're done. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A taut, psychological mind-bender from the bestselling author of
I'm Thinking of Ending Things. We don't get visitors. Not out here. We never have.
In Iain Reid's second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with alarming news: Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm...very far away. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won't have a chance to miss him, because she won't be left alone--not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company. Familiar company.
Told in Reid's sharp and evocative style, Foe examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person. An eerily entrancing page-turner, it churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale.