A BRITISH ASTRONAUT

In Yassin’s SF novel, a young man with obsessive-compulsive disorder has a hopeful encounter with an alien.

Damian is a brilliant young engineer, living in London and struggling with OCD. He calls the disorder “the monster,” with which he has torturous inner conversations. The monster threatens to sabotage Damian’s dreams of love and success, and the young man fears that it’s succeeding. He takes an exam with an unnamed space-travel program in the hope of being selected for a mysterious space mission. He soon joins a team of astronauts on a mission to intercept a UFO that has appeared near Jupiter; Damian volunteers to be the person who makes first contact. He discovers that the alien spacecraft contains only one living being and a single robot; the alien, who can access Damian’s mind, takes the astronaut through a series of visions: some are his own memories, and others are simulated scenarios. It soon appears that the alien wants to help Damian with his OCD—or at least explore it. What is the alien’s motive? And will Damian find a way to manage his disorder? Yassin’s narrative movingly portrays what it feels like to live with OCD; the monster analogy (“A monster who devours the most valuable thing one can have. Time”) feels apt, and the author renders it vividly. That said, the narrative jumps from one incident to another without much warning or sense of connection, making for a distractingly disjointed reading experience. In a particularly frustrating example early on, Damian moves between a psychiatrist appointment, an internal dialogue with the monster, and his astronaut exam with little explanation or context, making it difficult to get one’s bearings. The author further complicates the storytelling by having much of the narrative occur inside Damian’s head, especially in the second half. Sometimes, this confusion offers insight into the character’s inner life, but more often, it unnecessarily muddles the narrative.

An intriguing fictional exploration of OCD hampered by puzzling execution.