The Royal Free

by Carl Shuker

Equal parts workplace comedy, home invasion thriller and literary conundrum, The Royal Free is an exuberant, dark, wildly entertaining novel about death and copy editing – by the author of the acclaimed A Mistake.

James Ballard is a recently bereaved single father to a baby daughter, and a medical editor tasked with saving the ‘third oldest medical journal in the world’, the Royal London Journal of Medicine, from the mistakes no one else notices – the misplaced apostrophes, the Freudian misspelling, the wrong subtype of an influenza strain (H2N1 or H5N1?). His job is utterly boring, but – or so he tells himself – totally crucial: the Royal London is a stronghold of care for the human body, a bastion of humanism in a disintegrating world. In the London outside of the office, the prognosis for the body politic is bad: civic unrest is poised on the brink of riots.

Attempting to grieve for his lost young wife, while haunted by a group of violent North London teenagers in a collapsing city, James is brought to crisis.

Genres: Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 2025

Reviews

[Yvette Southorn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too clever for me. Did not live up to the hype. Some entertaining and tense passages but not nearly enough to want to recommend this to others. 2 stars is generous.

[Clodagh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre and I don't even know what the plot was. Still liked it!

[Summer Sanson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Occasionally an interesting thing would happen and then it felt like it didn’t matter. Maybe that was the point and I’m too dumb for this book??

[Joe Rice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up at a bookstore in NZ bc 1) I thought it’d be cute to read NZ lit while I was here and 2) it was longlisted for a New Zealand Book Award.

I thought the first 2/3 of the book were clever, funny, engaging…but I realllyyyyyy struggled to get through the final 1/3. It became really nonsensical, left so many more questions than it resolved, and was just really weird.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The clashing styles and focus on grammar prevented me getting into a state of “flow” which is part of what makes reading a book enjoyable, but I’d recommend this to others as an insight into the peculiar world of editing, in this case a medical journal, into life on an estate, and grief.
I’m thinking about the story two days after finishing, which is a recommendation in itself I think.

[Kate Becker · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book seemed a little too (not to) pleased with itself. It lacked flow, with a style that felt forced and clunky rather than entertaining.

The general message at times appeared to be “I used to be a medical editor and I know stuff about grammar (not Grandma) that you may not. Let’s see shall we??” The landmark references also smacked a little too (not ‘to’) much of “Did you know that I worked in London?”. Oh, and then there was the bracketed phonetic breakdown to indicate an estuary accent which gave off snarky vibes. Anyone who can use a ‘pin’ can write satirically about another person’s accent.

This was just my take from the first 35 pages. I promise that I gave it a good chance and struggled through to the end. To be fair, I’ve had a pretty good run of enjoyable, well-written books recently so it was possibly time for a disappointment.
Give it a read!

[Zachary Ngow · Rating 3 out of 5]

James spends all day editing this mythical text, the style guide of the 'third oldest medical journal in the world'. This novel is fragments of James life, seen from outside, lives of people from his work (the best was Ibrahim), his baby Fiona, all patched together with excerpts from the style guide (which often are omens). I enjoyed the 'workplace' parts of the book the most, the office politics and the actual work itself was fascinating. I also liked the depiction of his lonely single fatherhood. I wasn't too sure about the battle with the teenagers but it was well written, and definitely thrilling. Overall though, I'm not sure how I feel about the book... (though despite the same rating I liked it more than A Mistake).

[Amanda Vaughan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished this book feeling I just didn’t get it. Too many things at once and the key plot line set up not really resolved. Were the threats and the floods real? Will everything be ok now? Why was the book called The Royal Free when only a minor character went to that hospital? I would have preferred either a slice of life featuring the cast of characters working for a medical publication or a sort of thriller against the backdrop of London riots. This tried to do both and maybe something else too but I don’t think it came off. Lots of skim reading in the second half though.

[Helen Cummings · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed parts of this book such as the London location and I thought the creepy, thriller aspect well done. But other pages of office drivel bored me to tears and I couldn’t pin down the various office personalities at all.
Maybe the author was attempting to be too clever and he succeeded with this reader!

[Jess Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but I just couldn’t. I tried. I finished it out of stubbornness, but to be perfectly honest the last 1/4 was nonsensical. 3 stars is being generous, Shuker’s saving grace is that I know that he is a genuinely good writer most of the time.

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the hell was that.

[Nicoli Fox-Waite · Rating 1 out of 5]

Found the writing very stilted and staccato. Thoughts were written at random, with no flow or connection.

[James Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic, very clever, very funny - couldn’t put it down. Reminds me very much of “Catch-22”, “Gravity’s Rainbow”, and even “Infinite Jest”.

[S C · Rating 1 out of 5]

Words on a page do not make a novel.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not as good as A Mistake (improving on that might be an impossible task), but still excellent. A tense, disorienting portrait of grief and single-parenting (and editing, of course).

[Lee Rowe]

Very clever but I didn't finish it. Only got a short way in. Couldn't get past the thought that a sole parent would go out running and leave their baby alone, swaddled in their bed. I know that was a deliberate tension building plot thingy but I don't want to contemplate what comes next. I absolutely loved The Mistake though. Shuker is a brilliant writer. I was just too wimpy.

[Smay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m going to be honest, I feel like I didn’t totally get this book 😅 it may have been that I read only small chunks at a time, but I found the continuous scattered thoughts from so many different perspectives quite tricky to understand at times. Some definitely suspenseful passages, and I really liked the London setting.