Disease

Description

Bodily life is an uneasy business. The terror of disease is a ubiquitous one. New diseases are being discovered all the time. This book collects twenty contemporary diseases — privacy , for example, or innovation , or involuntary compassion — and presents their primary symptoms and etiologies. It presents sufferers’ anecdotes: Owen wakes up one day made of glass. Deirdre is allergic to tourists. A middle-aged diabetic is haunted by the feet of a Kurdish refugee child. Apples develop a persistent tremor, and peanuts plot underground. Human resilience is tested in dramatic new ways in Disease . Review “Sarah Tolmie’s Disease is a strangely funny book about fictitious diseases and psychological conditions. Presented in a scholarly tone that resembles a series of academic case studies, this book looks at some bizarre ailments that range from scavenging, a psychological affliction in which people compulsively move into old houses, to a poor guy who developed an allergy to comedy. “Tolmie’s imagination runs wild in this book. There are new diseases being discovered all the time, as the COVID-19 pandemic so violently reminded the world, but the illnesses presented in Disease are not only new but also quite strange, unique in their symptomatology, and fun to read about. For example, a man wakes up one day to find out he is made of glass, a poor young women suffers from ‘‘chronic misrecognition’’ – a disease that makes others confuse her with a variety of people, both male and female – and a man is followed by animals wherever he goes. Tolmie’s serious tone and the heartbreaking nature of some of the diseases contrast with the humor behind some of the cases presented. For example, the woman suffering from chronic misrecognition is at a coffee shop when people confuse her with the movie star Jackie Chan. Hilarity ensues. “ Disease has superb pacing, and the space dedicated to each illness ranges from a single paragraph to a few pages, but never more. This allows Tolmie to pack a lot into a relatively short book. There is almost no character development and there’s no dialogue, but each look at a different disease reads like a self-contained narrative…. “It’s not okay to laugh at someone else’s misfortune, but this collection of strange phenomena makes it okay. The beauty of Disease is that it’s packed with reminders of just how fragile human bodies and psyches are, but it simultaneously provokes laughter, which is one of the best medicines in the world. "With a great mixture of funny, sad, and creepy, Disease is a satisfying read that inhabits the interstitial space between humor, horror, and science fiction. Its strange format, formal tone, and array of short narratives showcase Tolmie’s talent and prove that a great imagination and a sense of humor can turn even maladies into great entertainment.” –Gabino Iglesias, Locus , April 2021 Sarah Tolmie is a speculative fiction writer, poet and professor of English at the University of Waterloo. This is her fifth book with Aqueduct, the others being The Little Animals , which earned the Special Citation at the 2020 Philip K Dick Awards; Two Travelers , one story of which was reprinted in Year’s Best Weird Fiction 2017 ; NoFood ; and The Stone Boatmen , shortlisted for the Crawford award in 2015. Her poetry collection The Art of Dying was a finalist for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize. She has two books coming out this fall: her third poetry collection, Check (McGill-Queen’s UP), and the novella The Fourth Island at Tor.com. Her website is sarahtolmie.ca.