Inside the Bone Box - Anthony Ferner

Anthony Ferner's intense little novella is somewhat domestic in nature, exploring the deep feelings that run between a married couple. Those feelings are mostly hate and contempt, which might make Inside the Bone Box sound like an unpleasant but common experience, but Ferner's vivid writing and insightful ability to get 'inside the bone box', explores the deeper sentiments that lie behind the ruins of Nick and Alyson's marriage. Nick and Alyson might hate each other, but there's reason to believe that they hate themselves even more.

Nick Anderton is an eminent and well-respected neurosurgeon, but he is grossly overweight and aware that his health problems could start to have an impact on his ability to handle the delicate nature of his work and potentially lead to mistakes in the operating theatre. And indeed there already have been mistakes and indications that he could lose his position at the hospital and his licence to operate unless he takes steps to resolve his problem. He's thinking of going for an operation to insert a gastric band.

Nick's wife, Alyson has her own issues to worry about. She feels she has under-performed in her career as a lawyer and is dealing with her professional and personal problems by drinking heavily. She has even driven when drunk and recently knocked a man off his bike. Both she and Nick suffer nightmares, and their relationship with their children Ben and Sophie is difficult. They direct vicious barbs at each other at every opportunity, blaming the other for their condition, which is easier than facing up to their own failings.

As Nick's detailed observations on the nature of his neurosurgical work, Inside the Bone Box is about the fragility of the human body and the human spirit. It's about finding ways of coping with our personal flaws, issues and problems, and Ferner's writing finds several interesting ways of expressing that, never allowing his characters to wallow in self-abasement and become unsympathetic, but expressing their feelings in calm, measured prose that bristles with spikes of insightful observation as much as self-hatred.

As you might expect from the title, Inside the Bone Box also has recourse to plentiful metaphors on brain surgery as a way to express the nature of Nick and Alyson's condition and their marriage; a tumour that if you attempt to cut out the malignant parts, risks damaging good tissue. But there are also other more esoteric metaphysical questions considered on behaviour, whether we are at the mercy of chemical brain reactions or whether we truly have free will. But more than anything, Inside the Bone Box is a very human story, insightful in its observations, finding a humanity buried deep down in Nick and Alyson that you can't help but find warm and compelling.