I got hooked onto Wilkinson through his first book of short stories, Memoirs of the Messed Up Minds, so when I found that his next book was to deviate from his dark sense of humour and somewhat taboo subject matter, I was a touch worried. This was, however, to be an autobiographical account of his struggle with arthritis from a young age and there was something I could relate to in this.

It was confirmed a few years ago that I don’t have arthritis and it’s still not known about 8 years of tests and a bought of exploratory surgery what’s wrong with my wrists that causes daily pain. I took excessive painkillers daily for years, overdosing frequently around school exams or when it was so bad I couldn’t lift a kettle or tip a saucepan. Manual tin openers were just out of the question, and it’s incredibly unfortunate that I’m not at all ambidextrous. Not that it would help massively. Though nowhere near as bad as my right wrist, my left still has its problems.

So, here’s a writer who got struck with something ongoing that just hurt when he was young and fell back before he came forward again. The book is incredibly honest, from the ways he tried to hide his condition from work to the self-pitying thoughts and feelings that I know only too well. More than once over the years I’ve had to remind myself that although some days I can’t use a toothbrush with my preferred hand, I don’t have cancer nor am I indeed dying in any other but the usual aging way. It’s a hard thing to admit the ‘why me?’ moans, and incredibly heartening to see someone you respect say it without the handicap of still meaning it. At the time, yes you do, but looking back, at the worst times I’ve been lucky. It often takes someone else’s account to make you feel grateful for what you do have of your health.
One of Wilkinson’s strengths is that he never excludes the reader through complex tropes and ambivalent sentences. He just lays his thoughts down cleanly, frequently with a touch of humour. At times this looks too simple - he is ‘telling’ where he should just be ’showing’, but this is a minor nitpick within the book. The other one is more down to personal feelings I have towards exclamation marks, specifically that I have very little time for them. In sentences where you feel you need one of these horrible symbols, it would most likely look and read stronger without it. Within dialogue is a different matter, as a character may actually ‘exclaim’ something and ‘help!’ reads better than ‘help’. Outside of quotations, however, it feels kind of tacky.
But those are the two complaints I have, and they’re not even that big.
Still, I sincerely hope to see Wilkinson getting back to his old, twisted stomping grounds in his next writerly endeavor.

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