Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller, Sceptre, $120 England's rural West Country in the 18th century. A child, James Dyer, is born. He is unlike his siblings, not just in looks and demeanour. There is something else. Then, after a fall in which his leg is broken, it becomes clear: he feels no pain.
He also heals unusually quickly. Dyer is truly an oddity.
With his family devastated by smallpox, Dyer leaves home as a child to join a freak show, later to be offered shelter by a wealthy eccentric who collects oddities including a pair of Siamese twins. He next goes to sea where, in less than salubrious conditions, he is apprenticed to the ship's doctor.
Dyer puts his considerable intellectual talents to good use, becoming a reputable doctor. By now it is clear not only that he cannot feel his own pain, he does not feel the pain of others. Lack of pain, despite cruelty and tragedy around him, has stifled his emotions.
The book is full of surprises as the extent of Dyer's 'talents' are slowly revealed along with his dead-pan personality. The effect is powerful as Miller draws an entirely convincing portrait of a man without pain. But this is not just a book about a freak. What might happen to such a person should they feel pain for the first time, physical or emotional? And indeed will Dyer ever experience it? Miller raises provocative questions about what makes a person human.
A race across the snows of Europe on a medical mission to treat Catherine the Great of Russia makes this as much an adventure story as a fable.