{"id":1650,"date":"2024-12-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T22:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2025-05-03T13:41:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T01:41:43","slug":"the-royal-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2024\/12\/07\/the-royal-free\/","title":{"rendered":"The Royal Free"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Carl Shuker<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Te Herenga Waka University Press<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, December 7th 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Royal Free<\/em>, Carl Shuker\u2019s 6th novel, is a complex, multi-layered literary satire beautifully capturing the current zeitgeist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 140 years old and wielding an \u2018intimidating\u2019 impact factor, the Royal London Journal of Medicine <\/em>is the world\u2019s 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 \u2018the Goddess\u2019 Godwit down through to a plethora of deputy, lieutenant, duty, production, op-ed, in-line, tech, job, managing, news, and student editors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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 \u2013 \u201cman as an ordered political animal, civilisation, and its critique.\u201d <\/em>The irony being that outside the walls of the Royal\u2019s<\/em> editorial offices, an escalating series of strikes and riots threaten the fabric of civil society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James\u2019 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em> weather these changing times?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A former editor of the British Medical Journal<\/em>,  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\u2019 personal lives. As a dedicated scientist and logophile,  I chuckled appreciatively over such descriptions as articles being \u201cbarnacled on poisonous Word fields and formats\u201d and e-mail exchanges debating the meaning of the subject line \u201cPolish coconut biscuits\u201d  (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  \u2013 from the way babies surrender to sleep with \u201ca great sigh…[t]hat wave of shiver, and then collapse\u201d<\/em> to the wonder and terror of finding oneself responsible for such small and miraculous beings.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Royal Free<\/em> 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\u2019t let this deter you: It more than rewards the effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carl Shuker Te Herenga Waka University Press Otago Daily Times, December 7th 2024 The Royal Free, Carl Shuker\u2019s 6th novel, is a complex, multi-layered literary satire beautifully capturing the current zeitgeist. At 140 years old and wielding an \u2018intimidating\u2019 impact factor, the Royal London Journal of Medicine is the world\u2019s third oldest medical journal, its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[448,466,370,500,18],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-448","tag-carl-shuker","tag-fiction","tag-nz-author","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1651,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/1651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}