Five lives. Five stories. Four will live—one will die. Who it will be? In this slow-burn masterpiece of psychological fiction, the choice is all yours.
Animal & dog death, gambling addiction.
Have you ever tried to pass the time by imagining the lives of the strangers standing next to you? Ilona Bannister’s Five introduces readers to five seemingly random people waiting for a train. But these are not just any five people. From the beginning we know that one of them is going to die soon. Very soon. In five minutes the next train to London will arrive, killing one of them. But before this happens you will learn their stories.
None of these people are saints. Readers might fall in love with the beautiful young man who is on the verge of gambling his life away. They may pity the cantankerous old woman who has fallen to the ground yet is refusing help. Perhaps readers will look away from the child throwing a tantrum. Or judge his mother, who must surely be to blame. And some will be curiously compelled by the successful and damaged businessman orbiting them all.
These are the candidates for this morning’s misfortune. But they don’t know it. Only you know. And you, our complicit reader, will not be able to resist deciding who deserves to walk away, and who deserves only five more minutes to live.
An incredibly original novel that breaks the fourth wall and asks the reader to be judge, jury, and executioner, Five looks at some of the most complicated issues of contemporary life: motherhood, disability, addiction. Every stranger has a story. And in Ilona Bannister’s skillful hands, five people’s stories come together to create an unforgettable novel.
Don't just take our word for it...
“Ridiculously good!! Razor-sharp, wickedly funny, and darkly thrilling. Five is a gripping, chilling story that asks difficult questions about judgement, forgiveness, and the notion of cause and effect. Unforgettable.”
– Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark
“Propulsive, sharp, and ferociously addictive, Five is one of the most original novels I’ve read in years. I devoured it quickly, but I can’t stop thinking about this story. Ilona Bannister is such a talent.”
– Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of The Note and The Better Sister
“Ilona Bannister has written a riveting, ticking time bomb of a novel. Five is brilliant: a gripping tour de force about destiny and choice—and, yes, an oncoming train. I devoured it. You will, too.”
– Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Taste the very first page
Someone will die here this morning, at this suburban train station. It will happen in the next five minutes when the 7:06 to London Victoria arrives.
Four others have died here previously. In 1861, an alcoholic mourning his dead wife and child in a stupor of grief. In 1923, a World War I veteran, suffering from shell shock, bombs exploding in his head until his last breath. In 1972, a teenage girl, unmarried and pregnant, forced to leave home by her parents. In 1994, a seeing-eye dog who gave its life to save its owner when he stumbled perilously close to the tracks at just the wrong moment.
At least two of these deaths were accidental, one was intentional, and one seemed intentional but wasn’t, but they will not be described here in detail because we have only a few minutes before the train arrives. And there is a great deal yet to discuss. And a fifth death to witness that may or may not be deliberate. It will be hard to tell when it happens.
Turn your attention now to the stairs descending to the platform. A small child struggles out of his mother’s grasp. He shrieks. He bolts toward the tracks.
He looks over his shoulder and sees his stricken mother, running. He laughs and trots to the edge of the platform. He turns around to face her, his back to the platform edge and the tracks beneath it. He does not realize that he has crossed the yellow caution line. Even if he does realize it, he is too young to understand the yellow line’s warning that another step back will be too far. He steps.
He loses his footing and the platform disappears underneath him. He looks at his mother. As he begins to fall, he meets her eyes and in them he sees something he does not yet have the words to name. It is not anger or fear.
It is hesitation. It would be easier if I lost him, is the thought she thinks for a sliver of a moment, a granule of time, thirty-nine hundredths of a second, to be precise.
Pause here for a moment.
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