The Royal Free

Carl Shuker

Te Herenga Waka University Press

Otago Daily Times, December 7th 2024

The Royal Free, Carl Shuker’s 6th novel, is a complex, multi-layered literary satire beautifully capturing the current zeitgeist.

At 140 years old and wielding an ‘intimidating’ impact factor, the Royal London Journal of Medicine is the world’s third oldest medical journal, its position as a bastion of academic excellence maintained by an army of specialist staff, from Editor-in-chief, Dr Claudia ‘the Goddess’ Godwit down through to a plethora of deputy, lieutenant, duty, production, op-ed, in-line, tech, job, managing, news, and student editors.

James Ballard, freelance copy editor and recently-bereaved father to 6-month-old Fiona, spends his working hours correcting the multitudinous grammatical and spelling errors that evade upstream editorial processes and converting the journal’s style guide from analogue to digital format. With over 500 pages of 10-point Verdana single-spaced font, this authoritative document is a synecdoche of the institution itself – “man as an ordered political animal, civilisation, and its critique.” The irony being that outside the walls of the Royal’s editorial offices, an escalating series of strikes and riots threaten the fabric of civil society.

James’ personal life is equally chaotic as he struggles to balance the demands of solo parenting and the need to be as useful as possible to keep his job. A group of disaffected North London teenagers have taken an unhealthy interest in his movements, an unknown watercourse inundates Fiona’s nursery, and he awakes one night to find her room occupied by a dog belonging to one of his teen tormentors. And as stress and sleep deprivation take their toll, he begins contemplating desperate measures to protect her.

Many of his colleagues face challenges of their own,  private struggles hidden from one another just as their extracurricular activities are concealed behind carefully positioned editorial screens. Work, tedious and rarified as it is, offers a reprieve. But can even an institution as venerable as the Royal weather these changing times?

A former editor of the British Medical Journal,  Shuker beautifully captures the spirit and arcana of medical publication: the allegiances, hierarchies, and comradeship that develop between people who share a professional identity despite knowing nothing of each others’ personal lives. As a dedicated scientist and logophile,  I chuckled appreciatively over such descriptions as articles being “barnacled on poisonous Word fields and formats” and e-mail exchanges debating the meaning of the subject line “Polish coconut biscuits”  (are the biscuits Polish, made out of polish and coconuts, or from coconuts made in Poland? Should they polish them, or to polish them off? Why not just call them macaroons?). But it is his descriptions of parenthood that resonate most strongly  – from the way babies surrender to sleep with “a great sigh…[t]hat wave of shiver, and then collapse” to the wonder and terror of finding oneself responsible for such small and miraculous beings.  

The Royal Free requires a degree of attention that some may find challenging, a book to return and to savour rather than devour in a single session. Don’t let this deter you: It more than rewards the effort.