Patient X by David Peace
David Peace's poetic portrait of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa demands focus and a quiet space
Patient X, a mixture of elegy, story and poetic portrait, focuses on the life of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, one of Japan's most notorious writers. Adopted and raised by his maternal uncle after his mother developed a mental illness, Akutagawa became known as the father of the Japanese short story, and outlasted the chaotic Taisho period from 1912-1926, only to take his own life at the age of 35. Now Peace, inspired by the writer's letters, stories and essays, takes us on a journey that is part biographical, part paean to the figure of the writer as a concept, with all the conflicts and impossibilities that being one involves.
From the flash-forward beginning, with its parable of Jesus and the Buddha looking down into hell, trying to save Akutagawa, up to the quiet drifting through his last moments, the voices and tenses flicker and change in a dreamlike way. Far from clear-cut, Peace's protagonist is drawn as a character utterly divided in multiple ways, and, through the drone-like verbal motifs which echo and echo again in the prose, we find ourselves trapped inside his head, experiencing what he does as a kind of lucid madness. While its poignancy and beauty as a work are never in any doubt, nevertheless read with caution: this is not a work to be picked up casually, but one which demands focus and a quiet space. [Clare Mulley]
Faber, 5 Apr, £14.99