THE ROYAL FREE

A darkly humorous workplace drama set in a rapidly collapsing London.

James Ballard, a 38-year-old copy editor for the Royal London Journal of Medicine and widowed father of 6-month-old Fiona, can’t find the words for many of the surreal events taking place around him. That’s a neat layer of irony in Shuker’s tale of office camaraderie, societal collapse, and grief. Everything seems a tenth of a degree off, unable to be explained by sound logic or reasoning. The characters grasp for meaning, finding that their work in the highly structured world of the Royal London is no match for a city quickly descending into chaos. James is stalked by an anonymous group of roving teens in his North London community. They threaten and taunt, eventually attacking Tatia, his daughter’s babysitter (and his hired sexual partner), and are seemingly connected to all sorts of strange events. Fiona’s bedroom floods and is inundated with leaves and debris despite no obvious leak. There is no explanation for this, outside of some vague sort of sabotage from the marauding teens, which James also uses to explain how their Rhodesian ridgeback ends up in Fiona’s room. This sort of mysterious disconnect propels the novel: The death of James’ wife, for example, is a mystery whose answer is never revealed but is hinted at in a section called “Search history.” London is succumbing to rioters, looters, and general chaos, but the world of the Royal London, of James and Fiona, remains fragmented from the reality bearing down on them. Toward the end of the book, James goes on a mad dash, looking for the child he has inexplicably lost—the baby who relies on him alone to exist in this world. She appears abruptly and magically, like so many characters and moments in Shuker’s bold, elliptical novel.

This intricate meditation on grief, trauma, and parenting adheres to a captivating, unpredictable internal logic.