There's a certain slant of absurdity that seems to be the province of many writers in the Commonwealth. It's a way of viewing the world that creates a humorous atmosphere along with the creeping discomfort of knowing that just beyond the baffling surface of a tale, the reader is coming heart to heart with an uncomfortably profound truth. Books that pull it off, like Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, usually land impressive literary awards because readers recognize the authenticity behind the author's tilted prose.
David Whitehouse's debut, Bed, is one of these books, a darkly funny satire of dysfunction. The novel's perspective is that of Malcolm Ede's younger brother, who never tells us his own name because all that matters is that he's kin to a man who hasn't been out of bed since age 25. By day 7,483 of Malcolm's self-imposed confinement, he weighs more than 1,400 pounds, and neither his parents nor his brother have been able to escape his needs in over 20 years. The neighbors are nosy, the press curious and the psychiatrists glibly certain that Malcolm's "real problem" is depression. But, just like the tangles of real life, Malcolm's reasons for taking to his bed are much more complex--and they make him, perhaps, the only sane person in the room. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at Intractable Bibliophilia