Tom Rob Smith sideswipes you with casually delivered “facts”, false leads and revelations in his new thriller, The Farm, bringing the mystery of a summer in rural Sweden to life with startlingly vivid delivery. It feels a little disjointed when you first start to read the story, with seemingly laboured dialogue and unbelievable actions making up the majority of the opening sections, but you shouldn’t be too fooled by this. It isn’t, as it can seem to begin with, a negative on the part of the writer, but rather it’s all a part of his larger master plan. When it does all finally make sense, you’ll understand the subtlety and craftsmanship of the man who has previously brought us Child 44 trilogy.
Released on paperback on the 12th February 2015, following its 2014 publication on hardback, ebook and audio book, it’s Smith’s fourth novel and his first standalone work outside the Child 44 trilogy. It was perhaps a little overshadowed by The Girl On The Train, the other big psychological thriller release at the beginning of the year, but the good news is that if you liked Paula Hawkins’ debut novel then you’ll find a lot to get drawn into in The Farm.
The story takes a little while to get into as Tom Rob Smith kicks things off with jarring style as his protagonist, Daniel, finds himself at the mercy of a very peculiar extended conversation with his Swedish mother Tilda. It starts out with separate phone calls from his parents, his mother accusing her husband of all manner of foul deeds and his father telling him that his mother has become “sick” with mental difficulties so she’s not to be believed. They have seemingly fallen out beyond any form of reconciliation during their first summer back in his mother’s homeland of Sweden, where the two had retired on a little farm in the country.
Though this is an interesting beginning to the book, we began to dismiss it as being out of kilter with reality, but slowly and surely it won us over with the sheer intrigue of what took place on the farm. You find yourself being drawn into the mystery of the story that his mother is telling Daniel, which leaves you in the same position as him, trying to decide who’s side of the story you’re going to believe.
The story lends itself to the slightly unconventional structure of the book, which begins with Daniel taking the calls before going on to take a sizable portion of the book to cover Tilda’s account of the events over the summer, and finally coming back to Daniel’s attempts to make sense of it all in the final third. There’s a lurching nature to these structural shifts in the story and that only adds to your disorientation, resulting in more questions than definitive answers on the part of the reader until Smith is ready to lay it all out for your in painstaking clarity.
While we didn’t always appreciate the writing style and the dialogue interplay in portions of the book, especially Tilda’s reintroduction to her slightly estranged son following the summer in Sweden, it’s an intentional delivery on the part of the author to set things on edge. You’re not supposed to be able to call things or understand actions, behaviours and interactions to begin with. It’s meant to grate, and that’s exactly what it does, but by the time you reach the half way point you’re fully committed to the truth and from that point on it’s a clever winding river path of a road to discovery.
With the Child 44 movie in the wings, starring Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman, it’s only a matter of time before Tom Rob Smith’s The Farm gets considered for a film adaptation itself. It was a big move away from the soviet era crime thriller territory that he had made his name with, but in his latest novel he’s moved on to a psychological thriller that taps into some of his understanding of life in Sweden, where his own mother is from. It swirls up the themes of mental illness, memory and power and interweaves them within a little Swedish fairy tale to keep you right on the very tips of your toes.
Tom Rob Smith, The Farm review: 3.8/5
