Iain Reid

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.

A Novel

plantdad

The privilege of being human is that our brains are big enough to decide the fate of other creatures.

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Tina ok

Walking is nonverbal communication. Like I can tell if [she's] mad by her footsteps. Walking isn't as overt as other signals, like the way someone smells, their voice, their laugh, their facial expressions. Steps can be frivolous, but they're often distinct from person to person. Familiarity grows over time, slowly, inadvertently. I never tried to get to know her walk deliberately. This stuff happens unwittingly... Living with someone can't be simulated or rehearsed. It has to be experienced, in real time. There is no substitute for shared involvement, for creating actual memories. Like, I know how [she] blows her nose. I've never thought about it until now, but I do. I know the cadence, the rhythm. She does it in the same tempo every time. These observations - her footsteps, how she blows her nose - they're like little secrets.

isn’t it good to scare yourself from time to time? It’s so easy to get stuck in your own narrow rut. We convince ourselves they’re paths to something else, contentment, but really they’re just ruts going on forever.

That’s what time does. It ushers a return to equilibrium. Unease becomes ease. A shock, no matter how potent, always wears off with time.

Are some things meant to be, meant to happen? There are some things we can’t explain. Some call it fate. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t have to know more than that. Maybe the orbit we inhabit is preordained. I’m okay with it even if I don’t really believe in that kind of thing. You can hold beliefs and not always believe in them.

How many people live day to day in a kind of haze, moving from one thing to the next without ever feeling anything? Being busy without ever being absorbed or excited or renewed?

Habitual, comfortable activity is the worst kind of prison, because the bars are concealed.

My youth was unremarkable, unmemorable. We all occupy a social district, and I had my place: middling, undistinguished, irrelevant. I was the physical embodiment of the numerical mean.

Despair is never satisfied on its own. Despair does not want to be alone. Despair wants company.

The thought of ever going somewhere new is scary, but isn’t it good to scare yourself from time to time? It’s so easy to get stuck in your own narrow rut. We convince ourselves they’re paths to something else, contentment, but really they’re just ruts going on forever.

Foe quotes

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