Road To True North

Historically, a road trip is a voyage of discovery, a chance to heal what hurts emotionally, an opportunity to reflect, a direct line to bonding with your companion(s). When Olly’s father Sean takes him to Iceland to distract him from the pain of a first love ending and a set of exam results which debar him from his academic ambitions, it soon becomes clear to the reader that Sean is just as broken as his son. His alcoholism has lost him his job, put his marriage to Tess in extreme jeopardy and cut him off from any meaningful relationship with Olly.

Holding adds Iceland to the mix, creating both a metaphor for this bleak emotional landscape and a series of intoxicating, life-threatening physical challenges which appeal to Sean’s misplaced bravado, especially when he is fuelled by drink. All is ripe for misadventure and disaster. However, this narrative-and Olly’s experience of it-is balanced and enriched by the people he engages with, who offer him opportunities to air his musical talents and a warm and welcome respite both from his father and the rigours of Icelandic landscape and weather.

Sean’s Icelandic liaisons are far less nourishing, consisting of addictive relationships with all the alcohol he can lay his hands on and spending time with Anton, his wife’s wealthy former partner and an inveterate thrill seeker who still insists on calling round regularly to see Tess. Anton’s packs his Icelandic holiday with reckless and dangerous activities designed to prove his masculinity and he goads Sean until he joins him.

Olly is clearly the adult in the relationship with Sean and Holding’s story-telling puts readers firmly inside his head and on the front row of the tragic pantomime which is Sean’s life. This is masterly writing-intuitively analytical and utterly authentic. Whilst Sean fritters away his life chances, Olly develops his musical ambitions and begins to make his mark. When tragedy strikes it is Olly who saves Sean’s life when Anton loses his.

At the end of the novel Sean must rebuild his life with Tess and accept the baby she is carrying, which is Anton’s. Olly has rediscovered his confidence, taken the first steps on the road to a musical career and seen the quiet regeneration of the love he thought he had lost. Holding gives us a mix of hope and uncertainty, bringing to the end of the novel the subtlety and drama which she threaded so successfully throughout the rest of its its pages.