Mental Illness?

[Amanda]

Loved the book. Couldn't put it down and frequently laughed out loud, (despite undergoing an Ofsted inpection at the time - now that IS amazing!) Like many other readers, particularly, I imagine, the female ones, I couldn't stand John's archaic attitudes for a good part of my journey with him. Towards the latter chapters I was actually ready to saw Mick's head off and leave John victorious. Mick's aparent lack of interest in Ellie and Jules, his ability to have an affair with the Swede using his conjoined twin's desires as justification... it was all rather convenient for Mick, wasn't it? Being a hopeless romantic, as soon as John's feeling for Jules were truly evident, I found him sensitive and gentle - an excellent father figure to Ellie. In short, like many bastards, he was very alluring - somehow all the more so for having been such a base moron at the outset!
But I digress - I left the novel seeing Mick and John as one whole person with profound mental illness. Perhaps this simplifies the novel too much? I found myself looking for clues in their childhood - that feeling of having always been different so evident in their memories / memory. An acute sense of loneliness, leading to an imaginary friend, and that friend becoming a permanent fixture.
I teach children with imaginary friends, invented by them because the world they have inhabited has become all too dark and terrifying - better to have a friend to hide from it with. It's funny, because when we have snacks in our classroom, these friends can't eat or drink either.But they are there, and we have to leave a space for them in our circle.
Food for thought.....

[Gary Gizzard]

Interesting thoughts.
As I was reading this I kept thinking of comparisons. Maybe it's my own sad little world, but I tend to group films, songs, stories, plays etc into pigeon holes that share even an element of similarity. In terms of a novel, I mentally returned to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig's classic journey through metaphysical debates and some fantastic gems of wisdom. I wonder if John McDonald is like Phaedrus, and therefore a symptom, as Amanda has mentioned, of mental illness. The two characters sit side-by-side with each taking the lead in different situations. There is, however, conflict and power struggle that I think we all face in trying to be good people, whilst being tempted to down a bottle of whisky into the early hours and philosophise!
I was also reminded of the film Fight Club, in which Brad Pitt and Ed Norton play two characters who are the same person. The scene in which Ed Norton batters himself, and one gets the first glimpse that Tyler Durden might not be a person in his own right chilled me in in the same way that certain pages in Freak of Nature did.
What I love about Whitaker's book is the up-to-the-minute Englishness of the situations, pints of Landlord and Davina McCall in a red bikini chatting to a TV doc, coupled with these metaphysical ambiguities.
A refreshing read. In a world saturated with real-life accounts of human suffering and people struggling through adversity, that don't tell you anything you don't already know, Freak of Nature is thought provoking and has bags of laughs. Five stars.

[rso]

Page one made me smile, at page three I grinned so I read on.

Different from anything Phil Whitaker has had published before, this fun romp through the pitfalls and pratfalls of being the lesser half of twins created unusual images. A plot which involves conjoined twins who don't get along, have opposing views on life, and can see each other only in a mirror is asking for complications. So when they physically fought each other it seemed each was boxing his own ears one-handed.

In love with the same woman ? … now that’s really something to fight about.

Who’s the daddy? I did wonder since there's only one torso. Who's in charge of the feet and legs, and who holds the jolly-stick? I'm still not sure. There certainly seemed to be a difficulty in walking. Definitely confusing and unputdownable since I couldn’t leave it in case I forgot who was who and up to what. At that stage it became less plausible.

Characterisation is credible, but I'm not sure about the mummy. Could she really be that fickle after knowing the fellers for so long? She is, of course, still going to get the same impregnation, so what's the difference as far as she's concerned? Mick and John could simply change first names; yes, the new Mick may be stymied by some medical questions but who'd know who was replying, and what was he doing all through the medical education of his other half? I particularly liked the portrayal of the Prof., whose chicanery is typical of the empire-building widespread within universities. It's a good depiction of the sophistry practised on purpose to acquire funding.

The medical terms are covered by the context thank goodness. I didn’t have any trouble just letting the story roll on without knowing the precise definition of each term. It's an easy read and this is a time when I wanted the underdog to win (I think). But it also produced as many questions as it answered.

Is this story a metaphor for the yin and yang of man’s psyche? Is it a depiction of bipolar affliction, there is only one brain after all? Since the DNA is identical does it matter who's the daddy? How big was the bed? Will these guys ever get along? Will there be a sequel? Will they live long enough for a sequel?

Readers of Whitaker’s earlier works may be surprised by the narrative style of this book.

Sue Ormerod

[rso]

I forgot to mention that the first image that popped into my head was that of Zaphod Beeblebrox in Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide. Did anyone else get that?
Sue Ormerod

[Ariadne]

'Since the DNA is identical does it matter who's the daddy?'

I think this is one of the points Whitaker is making in the book, isn't it? That in biological terms all we boil down to is DNA and chemicals. But that we're so very much more than that. The paternity question illustrates it perfectly: John and Mick have the same genes, the same lower half - but it matters enormously (as it does to any of us) which 'person' was the parent.