Jott

Shortlisted for the 2019 Encore Prize

London in 1935 is a world of dingy pubs and bedsits; of strange inventions like psychoanalysis, feminism and modern art; of fascism, communism and looming war; of asylums in which the mentally ill are subjected to cruel treatments. Arthur Bourne, a junior doctor in London’s oldest mental hospital, is about to jeopardise his future for the sake of his closest friend, Louis Molyneux.

Louis is an aspiring writer, as brilliant as he is neurotic, and since schooldays he has relied on Arthur’s steadying influence. Arthur only wants to make a life—to help his patients and pursue his career, to marry the woman he loves and start a family—but he is hindered by the demands of his troubled friend. Louis is convinced that one of Arthur’s patients can help him finish his novel, and with writer’s block pushing Louis towards a mental breakdown, Arthur sets aside ethical scruples and gives him what he wants.

As the consequences of the decision unfold, Arthur discovers that his old friendship is a threat to everything he would like to believe about himself; and as former certainties break down, he learns how easily even the distinction between sanity and madness can become blurred.

Jott is a story about friendship, madness and modernism, inspired by a real episode in the early life of Samuel Beckett.

‘Essentially, Jott is a small story about three or four people, much of whose communication is conducted in silence. But, because what underlies it is nothing less than the labyrinthine workings of the human mind, what emerges is a complex, nuanced literary novel of extraordinary perception’ — Herald

‘A fresh and supple portrait of an era in flux … a perceptive study of the shifting ground between sanity and breakdown … expertly done … fertile and endlessly thought-provoking’ — Guardian

‘Beckett aficionados will find much delight in the novel’s meta-fictions, but I admired it particularly for the themes of failure, psychoanalysis and psychiatric hospital care’— Anne Godwin

‘A shrewd portrait of a particular kind of male friendship, simultaneously intense and incomplete’ — Mail on Sunday

‘It’s a rare treat to read a novel that pulls you into its world so quickly and deeply. The characters and their interrelationships are unfolded with mesmerizing precision’ — Chris Arthur

‘The flowing narrative and nuances of everyday life, paralleled with failure and triumph, is reminiscent of James Joyce’ — The Lady

‘Erudite, bawdy puns, parodies galore… wisdom, humour and ease’ — Irish Times

Video by James Carney of Unseen Things.