When James Orr wakes up one morning he senses that there’s been a shift in his carefully ordered world, one where he has a good job, the respect of his family and the wider community.
The shift becomes visible as he looks in the mirror and realises that the left side of his face has slid out of place due to Bell’s Palsy. After a brief trip to the doctors in the company of his wife, James finds himself signed off work and without structure to his daily life.
As he tries to come to terms with his new reality, James realises that all the relationship rules have changed due to his medical condition. People don’t know how to be with him now that he has a visible disability and he doesn’t know how to respond to these evident changes in attitude towards him. This leads James to behave in ways he would never have contemplated before.
For example, he becomes obsessed, paranoid and insecure in double-quick time, particularly around a new neighbour called Kit, who is prone to going shirtless in March while fixing the roof. This act brings out James perfectionist streak to be seen doing and saying the right thing, which he miserably fails at because his facial deformity leaves him unable to smile normally or to speak well, making him feel even more depressed as scuttles back indoors.
James’s situation goes from bad to worse as he proceeds to misjudge every encounter with his wife, their friends, neighbours and the local resident’s committee as the thin veneer of respectability he thought he had slips away.
Lee writes about the underpinnings of living on an estate with acerbic wit and insight. There are moving passages too as James reflects on what he perceived his life to be before he was afflicted with Bell’s Palsy and the judgements he has made from a false sense of security. Now that James is on the receiving end of diminutive attitudes to disability he finds they are no longer quite as entertaining. This is a well-written, disturbing and yet compelling novel, it is impossible to turn away from James Orr’s increasingly destructive tendencies as he veers away from accepted norms. The question is was James driven in that direction by the unsympathetic attitudes of others or was it part of his nature all the time? It’s this chilling level of uncertainty that will keep you turning the pages.
With thanks to Granta for the review copy.
Buy the book here.
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