Perfect

Joyce (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry) sets this novel in a village outside London where a family with two children lives in a lovely country house. Everything is perfect on the surface until the series of events set in motion by a minor accident ruin lives. Paul Rhys conveys the sense of inevitable doom as the flashback story is told through young Byron Hemming's eyes—a friend tells him two seconds have been added to time to balance the rotation of the earth, then Byron's mother makes a terrible mistake. Could those two extra seconds be to blame? The present-day plotline reveals the fearful mind of a man called Jim who suffers from mental illness, has endured repeated shock treatments, and cannot communicate his feelings, stuttering out only a few words at a time. Rhys skillfully maintains the sense of lives spinning out of control as the two plots draw together and Jim's identity is revealed.