Name: The Doctor Is Sick
ISBN: 9780393316025

Anthony Burgess

Dr. Edwin Spindrift, a linguist, decides to escape from the hospital the night before his brain tumor surgery is scheduled and discovers a world of people exists outside his universe of words

The Doctor Is Sick

Kayleigh hughes

I had a tough time getting into this book although I could appreciate Burgess's dry sense of humour and unique use of words. It wasn't until about page 50 (of a 240 page book) that I really began to get into the rhythm of it and from them on I devoured it as quickly as I could. The plot of the story is really pretty simple. Dr Edwin Spindrift is a linguistics professor at a university in Burma and is thoroughly wrapped up in his work. His wife has multiple affairs (due to an agreement met between the two of them since he's having problems revving his engine so to speak) and leads quite a separate life from her studious husband. After collapsing in a lecture Edwin is shipped back to England where multiple tests are done that suggest a brain tumour. Nervous of people meddling with his grey matter, and distressed that his wife hasn't visited in days (she merely sends in people she meets in pubs to be his visitors) Edwin sneaks out of the hospital desperate to find his wife. What eventuates is a disasterous and absurd hunt through London with a handful of coins and the help of a series of increasingly odd characters.

Each of the characters have marvellously varied accents, from the Stone twins with their combination of Yiddish and cockney, to 'Ippo with his lower class London twang, to the German, Italian, Greek and Northern characters who grace the story with their presence, if only for a short time. Like in Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange this phonetic use of accent and dialect adds a great deal to the character without having to actually describe them, we get an idea of their class, birthplace, age (through the slang) and their emotions. It's an incredibly vivid way of describing them, and very effective. The characters are all absurd, unique and absolutely mad (so many of them felt like they'd be right at home in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland) but it is the use of their accent which really endeared many of them to me.

Another interesting use of language in this book is the actual description of the origin and etymology of words and phrases in the book. The book isn't in the first person, but it does use an omipresent narrator who can get inside Edwin's mind and we can see the marvellous way he absorbs and deciphers conversation with people. It's almost mechanical, and provides much of the answer to why Edwin seems to have so much trouble connecting to other people. Every now and then he'll notice something, say a little chalk board outside a cafe he's passing and he'll think "Chalk, chalk, calx," sometimes expanding on the thought and origins of the current word of interest, and at other times simply leaving it at that. But what is interesting (and important to the novel) is how he concentrates on and invests in the history/origin/meaning of the word and seems to completely ignore or pay little attention to the original word and what it stands for.

It took awhile to get into but this book really delivered and met the high standards set by A Clockwork Orange. The star of the story is the language and comedic absurdity that Burgess uses to tell his story, both of which make up for the fact that the story itself is perhaps a little lacking. I'm not sure this book is for everyone, but if you enjoy the construction and etymology of language, British comic surrealism/absurdity, and Burgess's unique writing style then I'd recommend giving this book a look over. It certainly succeeded in eliminating my hesitation over reading any of Burgess's books, now I can't wait to get my hands on another of his books.

Emmett

A wild, bewildering but occasionally wearisome ride. I'm not too interested in thick accents-as-humour, characters so exaggerated that they verge on the point of pure caricature, and games men play in pubs, so it wasn't as amusing as it might have been.