Ingenious Pain

"What does the world need most--a good, ordinary man, or one who is outstanding, albeit with a heart of ice?" This is the question at the heart of Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain , a book set during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. The outstanding man in question is James Dyer, an English freak of nature who, since birth, has been impervious to physical pain. Not only does he feel no pain, but he recovers from all injuries in record time. By turns a shill for a quack pain- reliever at county fairs, an object of study by a wealthy collector of human oddities, and, eventually, a surgeon, James Dyer--and through him the reader--gains exposure to a panoply of 18th-century philosophical thought, medical practice, historic events, and larger-than-life rogues and heroes, both fictional and real. As a surgeon, James Dyer excels, and his inability to feel--whether physical pain himself or empathy for others--seems only to enhance his skill with a knife. James slices and dices and cures without a scintilla of compassion while his reputation grows, until at last he arrives in Russia and the mystery of his unusual quality is resolved. Miller navigates his complicated story and exotic locales with unswerving confidence, bolstered, no doubt, by thorough research. James Dyer is not a character who invites love, but his adventures make for intelligent, deeply pleasurable reading. From Library Journal Conceived during a rape on a frozen river bank in the English west country in 1739 and raised in a small farming village, James Dyer proves to be a freak of nature, a man-boy who cannot feel pain. In spite of his affliction, or "gift," depending on how you look at it, James proves a bright fellow and, following a stint in the Royal Navy, becomes a highly successful surgeon whose skill with a knife is offset only by his coldness of emotion. Not knowing pain himself, he cannot understand it in others. Then, he encounters a witchlike woman in the forests of Eastern Europe who literally reaches inside of him and gives him knowledge of pain and suffering?and with it, joy and beauty and the understanding of what it is to be human. With its stylistic flourishes and realistic evocation of life in the 18th century, Miller's first novel bodes well for his future; readers will be entertained despite the abrupt ending. Recommended for public and larger academic libraries.?David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersberg, Fla.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Novels do not typically begin with the autopsy of the main character, but Miller's first novel is not typical. Set in Great Britain and on the continent in the eighteenth century's latter half, it tells the story of James Dyer of Devon, who fails to feel pain. Fleeing his smallpox-ravaged home at an early age, Dyer is noticed by a sleazy entrepreneur who turns his peculiarity into a profitable business. Dyer is eventually rescued by a wealthy man who collects freaks but treats them kindly. Dyer meets a pair of Siamese twins and others who encourage his interests in medicine and drawing. He volunteers for the navy, becomes an efficient surgeon, journeys to St. Petersburg in the dead of winter to inoculate the empress against smallpox, meets practicing witch Mary, and has a stay--as a patient--in Bedlam. These adventures make up not only a fascinating picaresque novel but also a perceptive and, at times, highly moving bildungsroman. Miller ought to be well pleased with his book--many readers certainly will be. William Beatty From Kirkus Reviews Miller's debut, an unusual but uneven cautionary tale cloaked in a historical novel, features a cold-blooded English surgeon, literally a freak of nature, who works wonders in the mid-18th century until being spectacularly undone by his pride. Born of his mother's adultery in the midst of a moonlit midwinter skating party, James Dyer is marked by that icy violation: He utters not a sound and is completely numb to pain, whether his or anyone else's. The first condition lasts only a few years, so that he can speak by the time his family is obliterated by smallpox. He learns to feign pain from a huckster who uses the boy's lack of sensation to sell snake oil medicine to crowds thrilled by seeing James pierced with needles. Rescued from this life by a mysterious, wealthy landowner, James soon discovers that he has become part of his patron's personal collection of freaks, but endures it until he observes an amateurish, lethal operation, sickening to everyone but himself, to separate Siamese twins who were also in the menagerie. He escapes to the Royal Navy, where his aptitude for surgical technique soon has him operating coolly in the heat of battle, then leaves the sea to set up a private practice in Bath. His reputation as a surgeon becomes as huge as his notoriety for coldness and greed. He is shunned in spite of his skills when he drives his wine-addled partner to suicide. Unruffled, James joins a wild race between English physicians to minister to the Empress of Russia, but en route he meets a witch in the woods, whereupon he loses the race but gains the ability to feel--a transformation inducing madness and necessitating a long, excruciatingly painful recovery. Vivid and precise in its isolated scenes, but suffering from a loose, ineffectual narrative. The result is a mere accumulation of arresting incidents rather than the taut, haunting story it could well have been. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Ingenious Pain reminds one at times of John Fowles's novel The French Lieutenant's Woman and the wry historical intelligence manifest in every line of that book; also, a little, in the depth and honesty with which it explores its themes, of Graham Swift's Waterland ; and, occasionally, in its fidelity to the tones and nuances of the period, of Peter Ackroyd's early flamboyant historical pastiches. But in the end the book is entirely its own creature, a mature novel of ideas soaked in the sensory detail of its turbulent times. -- The New York Times Book Review, Patrick McGrath ANDREW MILLER's first novel, Ingenious Pain, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the International IMPAC Award. He was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award for his novel Oxygen. He lives in Brighton, England. Read more