Metamorphosis

Cape 272pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has always been “drawn to writers who are maestros of metamorphosis”, said Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times. In his literary biography The Story of Alice, he captured the transition of Charles Dodgson “from a buttoned-up mathematics don into Lewis Carroll”. Now, in his first memoir, Douglas-Fairhurst describes his own metamorphosis: how in 2017 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the more serious type known as “primary progressive”. Within months, it was “manifesting itself more and more aggressively”: walking became treacherous – falls were frequent – and he found himself forgetting words and phrases. The “likely prognosis” was dire, an “unstoppable deterioration into increasing helplessness”. Yet Douglas-Fairhurst writes about his illness with “lucidity and sparkle” in this “piercingly perceptive” book.

Douglas-Fairhurst cannot help but see his experiences “through a swarm of literary references”, said Kate Saunders in The Times. His title is borrowed from the Kafka story, in which “the hero wakes one morning to discover he has turned into a cockroach”. He likens his predicament to Alice “falling down the rabbit hole”, and is inspired by the Edwardian naturalist Bruce Cummings’s “stoical and spirited account” of his losing battle with multiple sclerosis. The book ends with things looking more hopeful, said Salley Vickers in Literary Review. In 2019, Douglas-Fairhurst underwent an experimental treatment designed to “reboot” his immune system by shutting it down and introducing new stem cells. It was risky, but it “paid off”: Douglas-Fairhurst’s condition hasn’t deteriorated since, and there have even been some modest improvements. Although its subject is grim, this book is an “unexpected delight”.