To say too much about this book would be to risk giving the game away entirely: the plot is all. Ivo, the narrator, is 40, he’s very sick, he’s in a hospice, and he’s recalling the various gripes of his sad and wasted life. His nurse Sheila – “bright and sparky … a bit brusque, not fluffy” – keeps him sane by encouraging him to play an A to Z game, associating parts of his body with a memory. The book thus begins with Ivo’s musings on his Adam’s apple, recalling a story told to him by a vicar when he was a child (“it’s put there as a reminder of the moment Adam was discovered eating the apple that Eve had given him”). We get Ivo’s thoughts on the anus, on blood, ears, gut, hair etc, all the way through to X for “X-ray. Xylophone. Ribs as a cartoon xylophone. Xs for eyes. X-chromosone.” Z is implied rather than stated: the ultimate zzz from which no one will wake.
During the course of his reminiscences Ivo returns repeatedly to his relationships with his sister Laura, his friend Mal, his girlfriend – addressed simply as “you” – and his long history of “seasoning” his blood with “a few choice herbs and spices”.
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