The Unnamed

I seem to be in the unusual, distracted state of having several books started and stopped and scattered about partly read all at the same time, which is not usually how I do things.

This week I began and finished The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, because I had to read it for book club. I was not looking forward to it. It is the story of a fellow with an unnamed medical condition, in which he starts walking and physically cannot stop, and has to walk until he collapses with exhaustion anywhere he happens to be and falls asleep. I didn’t think this sounded particularly riveting.

But then I started reading and was pleasantly lured in and couldn’t put it down. That is until I got to the part where the protagonist decides that he is going to try to master his body with his mind, and then begins an internal dialogue that rivals Crime and Punishment for madness. At that point I had to put it down. I was home alone reading it one evening and felt all insane myself.

It’s a fascinating and disturbing book, that actually takes it's shape from an Emily Dickinson poem. In essence it’s a book about marriage, and the toll of sickness on relationship, and about what it’s like to suffer from something that others can’t possibly understand and suspect is all ‘in your mind’. Whether the character's condition is ultimately mental or biological is a conclusion you're left to reach more or less for yourself.

It’s quite beautifully written, and I liked what it had to say about marriage, without glossing over the temptation to ditch it when the going got tough. Here’s a little passage from near the beginning, as a prelude to the rest of the story:

Was she up for this? She lay in bed under the covers, her breath visible in the slant moonlight. Really up for it? The long matrimonial haul was accomplished in cycles. One cycle of bad breath, one cycle of renewed desire, a third cycle of breakdown and small avoidances, still another of plays and dinners that spurred a conversation between them late at night that reminded her of like minds and the pleasure they took in each other’s talk. And then back to hating him for not taking out the garbage on Wednesday. That was the struggle. Sickness and death, caretaking, the martyrdom of matrimony – that was the fluff stuff. When the vows kick in, you don’t even blink. You just do. She had to be up for it.

It's well worth the read, though I do concur with the end of this (good) review, that it disintegrates in places into something less than cohesive. When I started what I'll call the 'madness' section, I was almost shocked, and felt like I'd begun a different book, met a character. But perhaps that was a deliberate ploy to say something about mental illness (it's only here that we begin to suspect it is a disease of the mind, though it's hard to tell which is the chicken and which the egg). And I can't quite separate whether my disappointment with the end is with the circumstances of its ending or with the book itself.