Andrew Miller: INGENIOUS PAIN

The death of the main protagonist (James Dyer) opens the book - this is almost the ending of the story. And the rest of the book is an exposition of events that lead to this fateful ending: from the day he's born as a bastard, to his apprenticeship to a quack doctor, to his 'promotion' as an itinerant surgeon, to his meeting the woman who magically transforms him from someone who's totally numb to emotional and physical pains to one who's enabled to love and feel every pain, physical or emotional, and to his death..

I got most of what the book has to say but I didn't get the complete picture of James Dyer's character development. I'm not sure if I really got it right. Maybe I just got dizzied by the narrative structure that the author used. I'm not saying his writing is difficult to follow. Actually he writes well. But...

Anyway, I enjoyed most part of it.

This book won the 1999 Impac Dublin Literary Prize.

Rating: 3.0/5.0