tl;dr

A short, resonate novel about middle-class isolation and rejection with a corker of a cover.

opening remarks

Tom Lee’s The Alarming Palsy of James Orr was published by Granta late last year.  As much I like the title, I am absolutely in love with that cover.

knee-jerk observations

Yes, I’d say that waking up to this would be pretty fucking alarming:

I felt the same when I discovered I had swimmers:

One thing Lee does exceedingly well is his portrayal of the middle age, middle-class man.  Although I live on the other side of the world, James’ experience about being a husband, a father and a provider resonated with me.  These are the first world problems and anxieties that still matter at a personal level, even if they seem trivial compared to the current unstable political and economic climate.

There’s a quiet and efficient quality to Lee’s prose. That’s not to say it’s bland; he does an excellent job in developing James as a character, and there are moments of profundity, like this one, where he rolls out a pitch-perfect metaphor:

The Gist Of It

The Alarming Palsy of James Orr starts off as a story about a man going through a mid-life crisis, triggered by a sudden case of Bells Palsy, and then, over the course of the short novel, becomes something darker and bleaker.

James’ transition from competent, middle-class father and husband in a well-paid job, living in a gorgeous estate with its stunning, picturesque woodlands and its very white and mostly kind neighbours to a man who loses everything, who, in the eyes of his family becomes no more interesting than brown wallpaper, is superbly handled by Lee.  This is not a novel about how disability leads to ostracism and alienation.  In fact, his family, his community, his employer are anything but sympathetic.  Instead, this is a book about what happens to a man who gradually loses all sense of identity and purpose.  What makes the novel so powerful is that James is such a recognisable figure, we know this guy, for some of us we are this guy.

Aside from one moment of brutality that tonally felt out of step with the rest of the novel, this is an insightful, sometimes funny, but mostly sad portrayal of rejection and isolation.