Pilcrow (novel)

Pilcrow is a novel by Adam Mars-Jones first published in 2008 by Faber.

Pilcrow
First edition
AuthorAdam Mars-Jones
Cover artistSculpture by Alan Ballantyne
for Penkridge Ceramics photographed by Johnny Ring
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFaber & Faber
Publication date
2008
Media typePrint
Pages544
ISBN0-571-21703-6

Plot

The book is in the form of a memoir by an adult John Cromer telling the story of his childhood and adolescence in the '50s and early '60s. He develops Still's disease at an early age and is confined to bed under a misdiagnosis of rheumatic fever. When the nature of his disease is finally realised he is transferred to the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital in Taplow, Berkshire under the care of Dr. Barbara Ansell but by then he has very little movement left in his joints. Later he moves to a special school in Farley Castle where he is reliant on the 'able-bodied' to help him move around, and realises that he is homosexual.

Reception

It has received mixed reviews;[1] as James Wood comments in the London Review of Books, 'Pilcrow is a peculiar, original, utterly idiosyncratic book. It is admirably courageous, both in what it heaps on us, and in what it holds back. While it drops us deep into the every day, it boldly refuses the every day consolations of plot and dramatic structure.'[2]

Continuation

The book finishes with John Cromer at the age of sixteen. The next installment of his life is called Cedilla and was published in 2011.[3]

gollark: What of nonroot processes?
gollark: Oh, systemd has good sandboxing capabilities available in the unit files. Yes, you can do that with external scripting, but it makes it easier to secure things if it's an accessible builtin.
gollark: I prefer declarative service files, systemd integrates logging (so that `systemctl status` can show the last few lines of output) and generally has a nicer UI for monitoring and managing things (also, it seems that restarting services in OpenRC causes their output to just be printed to your terminal?), and actually that's basically it.
gollark: As for specific issues, I'm typing.
gollark: OpenRC on Alpine, Runit on Void.

References
  1. http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/pilcrow/ Book Reviews - Pilcrow by Adam Mars-Jones
  2. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n08/james-wood/nothing-in-a-really-big-way Nothing in a Really Big Way
  3. http://unitedagents.co.uk/pdf/Fiction%20Spring%20and%20Summer%202010.pdf Fiction Spring and Summer 2010
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