The Turning by Ian Blaikie - REVIEW

A story could take you anywhere… and sometimes it takes you back to a place you never knew you needed — the one special place that finally lets you find yourself.

Ian Blaikie’s The Turning is a suspenseful and quietly daring novel, the kind that first appears to be a time-slip mystery and then deepens into something far more resonant and rich. His version of time travel is deeply intimate rather than technical, rooted not in cosmic machinery but in human emotion. The result is a journey that feels simultaneously eerie, grounded, and unexpectedly personal.

What begins as a disorienting plunge into 1969 Doncaster unfolds into an immersive portrait of a life interrupted — or perhaps redirected. One of Blaikie’s great strengths lies in the way he builds atmosphere and character in tandem; you don’t simply see the past, you feel and experience its textures. There is sawdust in the air, warmth in the Chapman household, unease at the edges of Sycamore Lane, and a lingering sense that the past is not only a place but a mirror held at an uncomfortable angle.

Rory Turnpike, drifting through his modern-day existence, finds himself in a landscape where small acts of kindness have unexpected weight, and silence often says more than dialogue. Blaikie charts Rory’s transformation not through epiphanies or grand revelations, but through the gentle and sometimes painful accumulation of moments. The kind that change a man slowly, then all at once. It’s a thoughtful, deliberate approach that gives the narrative its authentic emotional richness.

Suspense runs quietly beneath the surface, tightening its grip as the novel progresses. Blaikie is particularly skilled at letting tension build through suggestion. He strikes a perfect balance: leaving space for imagination, lingering where it matters, and turning the page gently but decisively into shadow. The novel’s darker thread winds gradually into the narrative and settles there, a cold draft in a warm room.

And yet, at its heart, The Turning is about connection: between eras, between families, between who we were and who we might still become. Blaikie writes these bonds with a kind of unshowy precision that gives the novel its enduring power. You turn the pages not simply to discover what happened, but to understand why it mattered.

Blaikie’s handling of time itself is particularly intriguing. Rather than treating it as a puzzle to be solved, he offers it as a landscape to be traversed — uneven, unpredictable, occasionally treacherous. The “portal” at the centre of the story is less a scientific oddity and more a threshold of the psyche, appearing and disappearing with a dreamlike logic. Blaikie resists any temptation to explain it away. He trusts the reader to hold ambiguity without demanding resolution, and in doing so, infuses the narrative with an otherworldly timbre that lingers long after the novel is finished.

The 1969 setting is one of the novel’s most evocative achievements. Blaikie renders the era with a meticulous lightness — never nostalgic, never overly romanticised. Instead, he captures everyday life with gentle fidelity: the noises of a working sawmill, the neighbourly culture of a tight-knit street, the tactile warmth of a world less mediated by technology. These sensory anchors give the novel its emotional realism, grounding the uncanny elements in a richly tangible world.

The Chapman family, who shelter Rory in his displaced state, emerge as one of the story’s great emotional gifts. Blaikie sketches them with such sincere detail that they feel instantly familiar — not idealised, but deeply human. Frank’s quiet integrity, Audrey’s steady warmth, Caroline’s spark of curiosity: each contributes to the emotional scaffolding that allows Rory to begin confronting parts of himself he had long avoided. Blaikie excels at portraying these understated relationships with a tenderness that feels earned rather than engineered.

The contrast between the Chapmans’ generosity and the more unsettling forces moving through the narrative creates an elegant tension. Blaikie’s antagonist — unnamed here to preserve the novel’s suspense — is one of the book’s most striking elements. He appears gradually, almost imperceptibly, like a shadow lengthening across a familiar street. Blaikie allows the danger to grow in the periphery before it steps fully into view, a technique that heightens unease without turning the story into a thriller outright. The result is a haunting presence that shapes the emotional stakes without overwhelming the character-driven core.

Where Blaikie’s craft is most evident is in the way he interlaces suspense with introspection. Rory’s journey is not only about surviving a strange and perilous crossing of time; it’s about learning to see the unseen forces that shaped him long before he stepped through any portal. Blaikie writes the inherited weight of family history with a remarkable subtlety, respecting the complexity of generational wounds without reducing them to simple explanations. The emotional truths arrive quietly, with the precision of a key turning in a long-rusted lock.

The novel’s pacing — measured but steadily tightening — mirrors Rory’s increasing clarity about his own life. Blaikie seems to understand that transformation rarely arrives in a single moment; it dawns. It unfolds. And often, it requires confronting shadows we would rather sidestep. This realism, even within a fantastical framework, gives the book its staying power.

In the final chapters, Blaikie brings the threads together with a careful, confident touch. His ending, measured and sincere, offers clarity without overstatement. It leaves the reader with a calm recognition, allowing the story’s puzzle pieces to click naturally into place.

What ultimately makes The Turning remarkable is its understated ambition. Blaikie has crafted a novel that plays with time, mystery, and suspense, yet remains firmly anchored in the internal world of its protagonist. It’s a work that invites reflection, rewards attention, and trusts the reader to meet it at the deeper layers. The emotional resonance is cumulative, subtle, and powerful.

Some novels entertain.
Some unsettle.
Some illuminate.

Blaikie’s The Turning manages to do all three — and with a kind of quiet confidence that makes the experience feel both intimate and expansive. It’s a beautifully crafted, deeply felt story about the distances we travel, the wounds we inherit, and the courage required to walk back through our own history in order to move forward.

A rare novel that turns you not just through time, but toward yourself.