I still might have given it four stars but for the final section which I thought self indulgent and poorly connected to the earlier story. Daniel’s trip with his father is punctuated by the audio book (on casette tape) of The Artifex, a story about a young boy who when he becomes seperated from his siblings in a forest is found by a woman who says she is from a different planet. What begins as the much anticipated trip for Dan, aged 12, with his father becomes an increasingly horrific journey and what makes it so compelling is the clarity and conviction with which Dan's growing disillusionment and eventual betrayal are portrayed. Full of drama and emotion, and a lot of bad behaviour, Daniel soon begins to realise that the end of the journey will not be what was promised but he is powerless to stop the wheels once they have been set in motion. A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better is a deeply psychological story with creative twists that shock and captivate.

The pointlessness and stupidity of actions are all too apparent but the final actions of Dan's father seem disproportionate and out of character.Their one shared interest is a children’s TV program—The Artifex—which, no coincidence, centers around a child who has greater insights and innate powers than others of his age.

The day started with a pleasant enough breakfast: I made a pan of porridge and, as usual, teased her for the way that she pronounced it, pordge. I found myself checking the % marker on the Kindle with every page in the hope that I was nearing the end.I didn’t have a lot of empathy for the characters, but the expectation of an inevitable shock waiting to pounce had me transfixed. For twenty years, Daniel Hardesty has lived with the emotional scars of a childhood trauma which he is powerless to undo. At the time, Daniel lived alone with his mother in a small village, Fran having been kicked out due to his lying and cheating. That might have been clue enough that things were going to take a dreadful turn, but I didn’t catch on that quickly. Also, throughout the book we "listen" along with Daniel to an audiobook of the book that the Artifex series is based on.

Driven by an implacable self-righteousness, he is ill equipped to deal with the least sign of failure and, as his best-laid plans go seriously awry, he ends up being transfigured into a full-on sociopath, while his increasingly desperate son watches. At times it is a domestic drama; a father and a son he doesn’t really know driving through England on a blisteringly hot summer’s day. Contrary to expectations, he appears on time and they go, sticking the first part of the book "The Sorceress" in the cassette player. T]he implication is that the real achievement is to learn how to live with inevitable failure — as father, as husband, as man — and have the strength of character to try again, to fail again, to fail better.His father, Francis, estranged from his mother, is a set builder for the show in Leeds, and promises Daniel a studio visit. W]ith his third novel, A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, Wood’s talent has burgeoned spectacularly.

For the first hundred or so pages, I was convinced that this would be a highly rated book for me, but the lacklustre second half ultimately held it back. What Sophocles actually says is: “When a god drives a man, and deceives him, he will decide that what is bad is good and live only a brief while outside disaster. Slowly, the author reveals the relationship between the characters and unveils the father's erratic, unreliable and unpredictable personality. Daniel is obsessed with the TV series, and it is only because of her son’s fixation with anything Artifex, that his mother, Kath, allows Fran to take Daniel on this trip to see the film-set and meet the actors. The destination for their trip is Leeds, in particular the Yorkshire Television studios where the children’s TV series, The Artifex is being filmed.It's a strange tale but really fitted in with the rest of the narrative rather than being distracting. They have one shared interest, The Artifex, a children's TV program where Fran works on set, and Daniel has been promised special access to the studio. Daniel is heading in the right direction away from his past, but he knows that his father could be within him. Competently written with a descriptive use of language, the events that start to reveal themselves stir the imagination. The book is told from the point of view of twelve year old Daniel, who is on a road trip with his father, travelling north to visit a film set his father works at.