Freak Of Nature

by Phil Whitaker

Paperback

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Gypsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting premise, but it wasn't really for me.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phil Whitaker's three previous novels - 'Eclipse of the Sun', 'Triangulation','The Face' - have all been well-worth seeking out for their idiosyncratic characters & plots, but this piece from 2007 involving conjoined male twins takes some beating as a contemporary comical farce with tragic undertow of the freakish in a world of Channel 5 documentaries & Oscar Pistorius's rise to fame & collapse in infamy on carbon-graphite legs! The McDonald twins, Mick & John, are the best comic pairing since Miliband & Balls...two heads are not necessarily better than one...& two Eds is just gratuitous political masochism!...though the McDonald Twins have only one set of balls!...whereas Ed & Ed have three between them!...& it's the Mac balls that get the whole runaway mobility vehicle rolling along to a satisfactory climax in domestic harmony with Jules & Ellie...& a new arrival?... Oxford's academic & student sexual shenanigans are cruelly dissected along with the problems of having two brains but only one outlet for male libido! And thereby hangs a tail! A satire on the higher peaks of the psycho-medical world then from a trained doctor, this rollicking novel goes places that you could only have nightmares about...if you too had the awful feeling that you didn't actually exist.No spoilers from me! Just read this & laugh one of your heads off!...like the 'I' (John) of this hilarious tale.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phil Whitaker is a British author and doctor. "Freak of Nature" is his fourth book and the first one I have read. His first person narrator is one of the heads of a conjoined twin. The two personalities couldn't be any more different and near the middle Whitaker adds a twist that really makes you stop and ponder just where he is going with it. I found it engrossing, occasionally puzzling, sometimes confusing with UK references even a moderate Anglophile might have problems getting much out of, but enthralled enough to keep reading way past my bedtime.

As far as I know, this book hasn't made it to Amazon USA, but if you're looking for something quite unusual, often funny, and very well done, it is worth the shipping and bad exchange rate.

[Manda · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a strange book. Initially I found it a strange subject, but felt it was cleverly written and it got me. Then about half way through I found it getting a bit montinous and at that point it became a bit of a trudge. I have no idea what the wild west were about and skipped them completely. Weird.