HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

The Farm by Tom Rob Smith
Loading...

The Farm (original 2014; edition 2014)

by Tom Rob Smith

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
8787024,283 (3.51)85
Fiction. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:

The new international bestseller, from the author of phenomenal Child 44 trilogy...

The Farm

If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.

Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes.

Your mother...she's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things - terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital.

Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad... I need the police... Meet me at Heathrow.

Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother's unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father.

.
… (more)
Member:chrystal
Title:The Farm
Authors:Tom Rob Smith
Info:Grand Central Publishing (2014), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 368 pages
Collections:Illumination
Rating:****
Tags:None

Work Information

The Farm by Tom Rob Smith (2014)

Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 85 mentions

English (67)  Italian (1)  Dutch (1)  German (1)  All languages (70)
Showing 1-5 of 67 (next | show all)
Daniel believes that his parents are happily enjoying retired life in Sweden until the day he gets a call from his father telling him his mother has had a mental breakdown, been admitted to a mental hospital, and escaped. And then his mother calls him, telling him that everything his father has told him is a lie and to meet her at the airport. And so begins his mother’s struggle to convince him of a town-wide cover-up of the murder of a teen girl and a conspiracy against her for trying to uncover the truth.

A really well-done plot with great pacing and some clever twists. Tilda’s story is at all times equal parts convincing and suspicious, and it keeps you guessing right up to the end. ( )
  electrascaife | Oct 5, 2023 |
What do you do when your mother believes everyone is out to get her? We meet Daniel, estranged from his parents, living with his boyfriend in London. A sudden and urgent email sends him to Sweden, only to end up meeting his mother at the Heathrow airport. Bringing evidence of the crimes she suspects, Daniel can only listen as his mother's story unravels into a mystery.

A quick read, perfect for a rainy day. I wouldn't call the ending expected, but leaves you with a feeling of "it all makes sense now." ( )
  ezmerelda | Mar 8, 2023 |
2.5 stars from me. Strange story, unhappy with the ending. ( )
  dmurfgal | Dec 9, 2022 |
Very engaging though not the drama I was expecting. I was definitely drawn into the story from the very beginning though making the main character gay was on some level unnecessary though it was only a small level. Otherwise, you are certainly spending the time trying to figure out how believable Tilde really is. Her narrative of events seem so fantastic that you can understand why she was hospitalized. And yet there are elements that ring true and not false. The ending left a lot to be desired though. Overall, a pretty good read. ( )
  pacbox | Jul 9, 2022 |
It just drags on and on and on... it took forever to get to the point and then a lifetime to wrap it up, only to end at a brick wall. ( )
  ilkjen | Jan 21, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 67 (next | show all)
Meticulously weaving together literary themes of revenge and madness (it is easy to lose count how many woman submerge themselves in bodies of water at various points in the novel), this latest offering is a tapestry of fairytales old and new; so unsettling and oppressive that it blurs the distinctions between sanity and madness, reality and fantasy, leaving the reader guessing until the bitter end.
 
It would be easy to accuse Child 44 author Tom Rob Smith, whose latest novel is set between London and rural Sweden, of jumping on the bandwagon. The Farm lays out a pattern with which readers have become familiar. The picturesque but boring village ringed by isolated farms; a district dominated by a strong but taciturn patriarch; the disappearance of a vulnerable young woman, which is uncovered by an unreliable female investigator; the veneer of respectability that readers soon begin to suspect masks something rotten in the state of Scandi. But Smith, whose mother is Swedish, is playing a long game. The world he has created may initially appear full of enjoyably restful conventions, but any cliches in The Farm exist to wrongfoot us. This is a neatly plotted book full of stories within stories, which gradually unravel to confound our expectations.
added by geocroc | editThe Guardian, Louise Welsh (Feb 5, 2014)
 

Belongs to Publisher Series

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Until that phone call it had been an ordinary day. Laden with groceries, I was walking home through Bermondsey, a neighborhood of London, just south of the river. It was a stifling August evening and when the phone rang. I considered ignoring it, keen to hurry home and shower Curiosity got the better of me so I slowed, sliding the phone out of my pocket, pressing it against my ear - sweat pooling on the screen. It was my dad. He'd recently moved to Sweden and the call was unusual; he rarely used his mobile and it wouldn't been expensive to call London. My dad was crying. -Chapter 1
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Fiction. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:

The new international bestseller, from the author of phenomenal Child 44 trilogy...

The Farm

If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.

Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes.

Your mother...she's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things - terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital.

Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad... I need the police... Meet me at Heathrow.

Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother's unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father.

.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary
Daniel must weigh his mother's sanity -
delusion, deception, truth or lies?

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.51)
0.5
1 2
1.5 1
2 27
2.5 15
3 65
3.5 33
4 93
4.5 15
5 24

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,239,524 books! | Top bar: Always visible