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Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces
A darkly comic and moving reflection on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is certain, from the award-winning Oxford professor
We all have trapdoors in our lives. Sometimes we jump off just in time ... But sometimes we are unlucky. My own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist.
When the trapdoor opened for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a world of MRI scans, a disobedient body and the crushing unpredictability of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. But, like Alice tumbling into Wonderland, his fall did something else. It took him deep into his own his hopes, his fears, his loves and losses, and the books that would sustain, inform and nourish him as his life began to transform in ways he could never have imagined.
From Kafka to Barbellion, this is a literary map of the journey from the kingdom of the well to the land of the sick, and forwards into a hopeful future. It's an ode to great writing, to storytelling, to science and to the power of the imagination.
We all have trapdoors in our lives. Sometimes we jump off just in time ... But sometimes we are unlucky. My own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist.
When the trapdoor opened for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a world of MRI scans, a disobedient body and the crushing unpredictability of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. But, like Alice tumbling into Wonderland, his fall did something else. It took him deep into his own his hopes, his fears, his loves and losses, and the books that would sustain, inform and nourish him as his life began to transform in ways he could never have imagined.
From Kafka to Barbellion, this is a literary map of the journey from the kingdom of the well to the land of the sick, and forwards into a hopeful future. It's an ode to great writing, to storytelling, to science and to the power of the imagination.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published February 16, 2023
23 people are currently reading
261 people want to read
About the author
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
7 books36 followersDouglas-Fairhurst is Professor of English Literature at Oxford University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His books include Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist and The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
August 24, 2023
From a person who has MS and shows you how important books are with his real life of getting the diagnosis and coming out with a better understanding of what it is and what it means
February 3, 2023
Literary critics are constantly asked the point of what they do. They also ask themselves. Why write about writing?
In Metamorphosis, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, a professor of English at Oxford University, and author of works on Dickens and Lewis Carroll, is struck by one kind of answer.
It is borne in upon him that he may fruitfully write about writing in order to pars a devastating diagnosis, to read between the lines of an illness that is rewriting his brain and body, a diagnosis of primary progressive MS, received in October 2017 — a trapdoor opening under him, something ‘between a life sentence and a death sentence’.
Suddenly literary creations like Tiny Tim, the Tin Man, Peter Pan, Carroll’s Alice, Pinocchio and Beckett’s Winnie all take on urgent meaning and existence, as Douglas-Fairhurst’s reality pitches and tosses.
After a fall outside the Bodleian Library leaves him sprawling on his back, it seems as if he is fated in the same way as Kafka’s nightmarish beetle. Everything is changing, but not in Ovid’s polymorphic, generative, immortalising sense.
Ever the researcher, Douglas-Fairhurst embarks on an odyssey into his own body that will result in harvesting his stem cells, neutralising his blood, and re-transplanting the stem cells, in an effort to stop his body attacking its own nervous system.
Metamorphosis tells the story of Douglas-Fairhurst’s time in the chrysalis of this treatment and his wondrous rebirthday with utter lack of self-pity or sentimentality.
Intertwined with his account of 21st century medical miracles is an appraisal of the Edwardian entomologist Bruce Cummings’s Journal of a Disappointed Man, returning Cummings from oblivion even as he himself is saved from it.
The gathering change in Douglas-Fairhurst from critic as judge to critic as appreciator, from reader to read, steals up on us.
Ultimately this is a love letter to life itself, reminding us to put down our books and walk out into the light to seek the best views from the highest vantage point we can.
Metamorphosis is a high wire act of literary brilliance, and an account of rare existential courage.
In Metamorphosis, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, a professor of English at Oxford University, and author of works on Dickens and Lewis Carroll, is struck by one kind of answer.
It is borne in upon him that he may fruitfully write about writing in order to pars a devastating diagnosis, to read between the lines of an illness that is rewriting his brain and body, a diagnosis of primary progressive MS, received in October 2017 — a trapdoor opening under him, something ‘between a life sentence and a death sentence’.
Suddenly literary creations like Tiny Tim, the Tin Man, Peter Pan, Carroll’s Alice, Pinocchio and Beckett’s Winnie all take on urgent meaning and existence, as Douglas-Fairhurst’s reality pitches and tosses.
After a fall outside the Bodleian Library leaves him sprawling on his back, it seems as if he is fated in the same way as Kafka’s nightmarish beetle. Everything is changing, but not in Ovid’s polymorphic, generative, immortalising sense.
Ever the researcher, Douglas-Fairhurst embarks on an odyssey into his own body that will result in harvesting his stem cells, neutralising his blood, and re-transplanting the stem cells, in an effort to stop his body attacking its own nervous system.
Metamorphosis tells the story of Douglas-Fairhurst’s time in the chrysalis of this treatment and his wondrous rebirthday with utter lack of self-pity or sentimentality.
Intertwined with his account of 21st century medical miracles is an appraisal of the Edwardian entomologist Bruce Cummings’s Journal of a Disappointed Man, returning Cummings from oblivion even as he himself is saved from it.
The gathering change in Douglas-Fairhurst from critic as judge to critic as appreciator, from reader to read, steals up on us.
Ultimately this is a love letter to life itself, reminding us to put down our books and walk out into the light to seek the best views from the highest vantage point we can.
Metamorphosis is a high wire act of literary brilliance, and an account of rare existential courage.
January 4, 2023
In Metamorphosis, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst provides a powerful and compelling account of his experiences of living with multiple sclerosis.
Douglas-Fairhurst is a professor of English Literature, and I had previously read excellent books of his on Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll , so I was intrigued to read a more personal piece of writing by him. He engages us from the book's opening sentences in which he states "We all have trapdoors in our lives", his being his initial diagnosis of primary progressive MS. He goes on to describe the progress of his illness in a way that is honest, yet totally lacking in self-pity as he highlights some of the most painful aspects of his experiences as well as finding moments of gallows humour. The medical explanations he includes are clearly given in layman's terms and are highly illuminating.
Alongside this, what makes this book so brilliant is Douglas-Fairhurst's ability to draw on his expertise as a literary scholar to find analogies for his own experiences and to make a convincing case for the vital importance of stories in navigating periods of personal crisis. He explains his long-held conviction that "reading wasn't simply a form of escapism, but rather an invitation to leave ordinary life behind for a few hours and then re-enter it from a slightly different angle" - a mantra that appears to hold true as he reflects on writers such as Kafka, Beckett and Forster whose words prove instructive. Above all, the book pays homage to the pseudynymous diarist W.N.P. Barbellion whose long-neglected Journal of a Disappointed Man records his own struggles with multiple sclerosis. This was a book which was new to me but which I am now keen to seek out and read in full.
This is a moving and ultimately hopeful memoir which is both a testimony of life with a serious illness and a manifesto for literature and storytelling. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.
Douglas-Fairhurst is a professor of English Literature, and I had previously read excellent books of his on Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll , so I was intrigued to read a more personal piece of writing by him. He engages us from the book's opening sentences in which he states "We all have trapdoors in our lives", his being his initial diagnosis of primary progressive MS. He goes on to describe the progress of his illness in a way that is honest, yet totally lacking in self-pity as he highlights some of the most painful aspects of his experiences as well as finding moments of gallows humour. The medical explanations he includes are clearly given in layman's terms and are highly illuminating.
Alongside this, what makes this book so brilliant is Douglas-Fairhurst's ability to draw on his expertise as a literary scholar to find analogies for his own experiences and to make a convincing case for the vital importance of stories in navigating periods of personal crisis. He explains his long-held conviction that "reading wasn't simply a form of escapism, but rather an invitation to leave ordinary life behind for a few hours and then re-enter it from a slightly different angle" - a mantra that appears to hold true as he reflects on writers such as Kafka, Beckett and Forster whose words prove instructive. Above all, the book pays homage to the pseudynymous diarist W.N.P. Barbellion whose long-neglected Journal of a Disappointed Man records his own struggles with multiple sclerosis. This was a book which was new to me but which I am now keen to seek out and read in full.
This is a moving and ultimately hopeful memoir which is both a testimony of life with a serious illness and a manifesto for literature and storytelling. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.
July 8, 2024
Pretty funny, pretty heartfelt. Had a good topical and structural hook (partially being an analysis of Barbellion’s Journal)
Read
August 6, 2024DNF for me at 35%. Just not my thing, and I think it is because I have no idea who the author is. And I'm not sure if it is a memoir of the author or of this chap Cummings who passed away from MS at the turn of the 20th C. Bit puzzled by it.
April 26, 2023
A beautiful, thought provoking and poignant story that deserves all the superlatives you can throw at it. I was moved beyond belief, taken to places in mind I knew not existed.
It has left me humbled and hopeful but mostly questioning of what really matters.
Thank you.
It has left me humbled and hopeful but mostly questioning of what really matters.
Thank you.
March 21, 2023
This was such a privelidge to read. Robert shares the story of learning he has MS and the journey of his treatment. He also shares his joy of reading and how that helped him to not only get through tough periods but also to help make sense of what he was going through
Everyone should read this
Everyone should read this
January 25, 2023
Thank you for the advanced copy of this.
I read this over a couple of evenings. I am familiar with previous work from this author.
This memoir is truly a beautiful piece of work, it's intense, emotive and powerful and everything I feel is laid bare for the reader.
He gives an honest and pure account of his diagnosis of MS and his journey from that point. He gives us a powerful insight into living with a progressive condition.
A truly amazing piece of writing, I cannot recommend this highly enough.
I read this over a couple of evenings. I am familiar with previous work from this author.
This memoir is truly a beautiful piece of work, it's intense, emotive and powerful and everything I feel is laid bare for the reader.
He gives an honest and pure account of his diagnosis of MS and his journey from that point. He gives us a powerful insight into living with a progressive condition.
A truly amazing piece of writing, I cannot recommend this highly enough.
February 25, 2023
genuinely cannot recommend enough.
July 6, 2023
This ought to be a very depressing book since it describes the onset and development of multiple sclerosis in an Oxford don. He is on his way to a drinks party when quite suddenly his legs fail to obey him, ‘It was if I were a puppet,’ he writes, ‘and someone had cut one of my strings.’ He stubs his mutinous foot against the kerb, and falls flat on his face outside the Bodleian Library.
In the ensuing chapters he does not spare us (or himself} a detailed clinical account of the nature of the disease and the grim prognosis: there is no cure (as yet), and the disease has the potential to destroy the brain and the central nervous system, piece by piece, sporadically perhaps, but inexorably.
Amongst many other devastating reassessments of his life and his place in the world, Douglas-Fairhurst was faced with the question of how to tell family, friends and colleagues what was happening to him. He compares this to coming out as gay as an undergraduate, and says that it was more like a process than an event. He struggled to find words that were not ‘ungenerous or ungrateful’ for a Facebook post, which I remember seeing, in which he says that ‘the line between sympathy and pity is one I’m especially keen not to cross. If anything, I’d prefer people to make jokes about it.’
Well, that’s not so easy. One understands his mistrust of the demeaning face of pity, and mistrusts it, recognising that it is mingled with the fear that the horror might happen to you. But, after all that is a socially common response in most people in the presence of serious illness or bereavement. Words stop working, and it is hard to make a joke when one is afraid of making some ghastly breach of taste, like farting in church.
But hang on. Pity and Fear are Aristotelian elements of tragedy, are they not? And yet, despite the grim fact of the disease, this remarkable book does not read like a tragedy. Douglas-Fairhurst pushes away our pity and fear. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. It is not surprising that he has recourse to books in order to attempt to penetrate and review the meaning of his condition. As he says to his students at the end of his introductory lecture at the beginning of each academic year, literature is not a mirror, rather it is ‘a lens we could use to refocus our understanding of the world.’
Going back to his ominous fall outside the Bodleian, where he finds himself ‘lying on [his] back, with [his] arms and legs frantically waving in the air as [he] tried to haul [himself] upright,’ it is not surprising that he references Gregor Samsa, who is turned into a beetle in some kind of random cosmic joke. This reference is of course the source of the book’s title and striking cover.
Another book which Douglas-Fairhurst comes across, as he reads around other cases of MS, is The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919) by one Bruce Cummings, who writes under the glorious pseudonym of W.N.P. Barbelion. Parallels with the life and writings of this fellow traveller in the realm of compromised faculties run through the book in counterpoint to the progress of his own disease, but there is a stylistic parallel too. The description on the jacket of Cummings’ book describes it as ‘joyful and despairing, self-lacerating and witty.’
Douglas-Fairhurst makes illuminating reference to a great many texts, notably Peter Pan and the Alice books on which he has written so authoritatively. Other authors include Beckett, Burgess, Joyce, Keats, Tennyson, Heine – among many, many others – and, of course, Kafka – varifocal lenses on other worlds.
‘What I needed was laughter,’ Douglas-Fairhurst says, and later, ‘the worst was not, so long as I could still look at it with a comic squint.’ And there is mischievous laughter breezing throughout the book, forbidding any maudlin false sentiment. The style is often very funny. Take the neat rhetorical flourish in the zeugma here: ‘University is a place where people try to reinvent themselves. Some drop their old nicknames, and others drop their aitches.’
Elsewhere the giggles bubble up from fantastical figurative language, comparable to Dickens’ zany similes and metaphors. For instance:
‘Now my powers of organisation were about as useful as a filing cabinet made of sand.’
‘Within a couple of minutes, I had begun to run – or more accurately lurch like a panicked giraffe – down the street.’
Douglas Fairhurst has, of course, written brilliantly on Dickens in The Turning Point.
For me the funniest moment arises from a wholly unfunny circumstance; one of the symptoms of his condition is urinary ‘urgency’. He describes an embarrassing incident.
‘By the time I reached home I was starting to leak. A few seconds later I found myself peeing into a bush, just outside my front door, while an elderly neighbour walked past tutting and her dog looked back at me with a new found respect.’
Love that dog.
Finally, out of the tragedy of a randomly afflicted life, comes life-affirming laughter, a humanity, courageous but not ostentatious, and a defiant Nietzschean gaiety.
In the ensuing chapters he does not spare us (or himself} a detailed clinical account of the nature of the disease and the grim prognosis: there is no cure (as yet), and the disease has the potential to destroy the brain and the central nervous system, piece by piece, sporadically perhaps, but inexorably.
Amongst many other devastating reassessments of his life and his place in the world, Douglas-Fairhurst was faced with the question of how to tell family, friends and colleagues what was happening to him. He compares this to coming out as gay as an undergraduate, and says that it was more like a process than an event. He struggled to find words that were not ‘ungenerous or ungrateful’ for a Facebook post, which I remember seeing, in which he says that ‘the line between sympathy and pity is one I’m especially keen not to cross. If anything, I’d prefer people to make jokes about it.’
Well, that’s not so easy. One understands his mistrust of the demeaning face of pity, and mistrusts it, recognising that it is mingled with the fear that the horror might happen to you. But, after all that is a socially common response in most people in the presence of serious illness or bereavement. Words stop working, and it is hard to make a joke when one is afraid of making some ghastly breach of taste, like farting in church.
But hang on. Pity and Fear are Aristotelian elements of tragedy, are they not? And yet, despite the grim fact of the disease, this remarkable book does not read like a tragedy. Douglas-Fairhurst pushes away our pity and fear. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. It is not surprising that he has recourse to books in order to attempt to penetrate and review the meaning of his condition. As he says to his students at the end of his introductory lecture at the beginning of each academic year, literature is not a mirror, rather it is ‘a lens we could use to refocus our understanding of the world.’
Going back to his ominous fall outside the Bodleian, where he finds himself ‘lying on [his] back, with [his] arms and legs frantically waving in the air as [he] tried to haul [himself] upright,’ it is not surprising that he references Gregor Samsa, who is turned into a beetle in some kind of random cosmic joke. This reference is of course the source of the book’s title and striking cover.
Another book which Douglas-Fairhurst comes across, as he reads around other cases of MS, is The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919) by one Bruce Cummings, who writes under the glorious pseudonym of W.N.P. Barbelion. Parallels with the life and writings of this fellow traveller in the realm of compromised faculties run through the book in counterpoint to the progress of his own disease, but there is a stylistic parallel too. The description on the jacket of Cummings’ book describes it as ‘joyful and despairing, self-lacerating and witty.’
Douglas-Fairhurst makes illuminating reference to a great many texts, notably Peter Pan and the Alice books on which he has written so authoritatively. Other authors include Beckett, Burgess, Joyce, Keats, Tennyson, Heine – among many, many others – and, of course, Kafka – varifocal lenses on other worlds.
‘What I needed was laughter,’ Douglas-Fairhurst says, and later, ‘the worst was not, so long as I could still look at it with a comic squint.’ And there is mischievous laughter breezing throughout the book, forbidding any maudlin false sentiment. The style is often very funny. Take the neat rhetorical flourish in the zeugma here: ‘University is a place where people try to reinvent themselves. Some drop their old nicknames, and others drop their aitches.’
Elsewhere the giggles bubble up from fantastical figurative language, comparable to Dickens’ zany similes and metaphors. For instance:
‘Now my powers of organisation were about as useful as a filing cabinet made of sand.’
‘Within a couple of minutes, I had begun to run – or more accurately lurch like a panicked giraffe – down the street.’
Douglas Fairhurst has, of course, written brilliantly on Dickens in The Turning Point.
For me the funniest moment arises from a wholly unfunny circumstance; one of the symptoms of his condition is urinary ‘urgency’. He describes an embarrassing incident.
‘By the time I reached home I was starting to leak. A few seconds later I found myself peeing into a bush, just outside my front door, while an elderly neighbour walked past tutting and her dog looked back at me with a new found respect.’
Love that dog.
Finally, out of the tragedy of a randomly afflicted life, comes life-affirming laughter, a humanity, courageous but not ostentatious, and a defiant Nietzschean gaiety.
March 24, 2023
A memoir of illness and treatment, as viewed through a prism of literature as befitting a professor of English Literature at Oxford. I listened to the audiobook version of this book, very well narrated by Peter Caulfield, and it's certainly an erudite experience filled with depth and cultural reference. I found the sections about the author's MS to be engagingly human, although laced with privilege; despite the treatment costing the "price of a house" he opts for private healthcare, which for a lot of people like me is just a fantasy. That only makes up approximately half of the book, though, and the rest is all literary allusion, paying close attention to the great and unfairly little-known JOURNAL OF A DISAPPOINTED MAN, which I appreciated, alongside many other famous novels along the way. It's an intellectual rather than emotional journey, but there's no denying the author's skill with language.
July 19, 2025
TW: mentions of death, dying, terminal illness, grief, reference to HP
dang this was good. as a disabled person who also got sooo much out of reading the Metamorphosis by Franz K, I gobbled this up.
It's not inspiration porn, it's not "wow look I got better by being positive!" it is what it is - getting diagnosed and the journey that brings, both the profound and the bleak.
dang this was good. as a disabled person who also got sooo much out of reading the Metamorphosis by Franz K, I gobbled this up.
It's not inspiration porn, it's not "wow look I got better by being positive!" it is what it is - getting diagnosed and the journey that brings, both the profound and the bleak.
May 13, 2023
This book is really beautiful. A sensitive, thoughtful reflection on living with illness. I enjoyed how candid this book felt - it had real clarity to it and despite dealing with difficult topics wasn't a painful read.
July 13, 2023
I was hypnotised by the sheer honesty and searing humanity so compelling exposed by the brilliant author of this book. Resonant and important with ravishing twists of humour it's one of the best memoirs I've ever read. Read it.
July 26, 2023
A remarkably brilliant book - this is, to my mind, a love story masquerading as an illness memoir. Kafka and Barbellion (who also had MS) are woven throughout the story, which is about reading, stories, vanity, shame, envy, sorrow, fear - all the big stuff - but done with the lightest of touches.
December 30, 2023
A literary account of illness and living. Smartly written, thought provoking, and reflective on one person’s story. I say “one person” because if you know the story of one person, it’s said that you know the story of one person. This person’s story is compellingly shared.
March 11, 2024
Interesting how things have moved on in the treatment of MS. I wish aHSCT had been an option when my late husband had been diagnosed with primary degenerative MS. Definitely more hope for those recently diagnosed.
December 19, 2023
Not gonna lie - this was a tough read.
June 22, 2024
Loved it
August 27, 2023
An excellent reflective memoir on MS and on the ways in which a literary scholar comes to terms with a life-changing illness (via reading books that shine different lights on it, as well as by identifying books that track similar experiences... and by writing). Someone in my family had primary progressive MS and the narrative of symptoms ranging from irritating to devastating rings true.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews