Andrew's Addled Autopsy

So why is Andrew addled? And is this a real autopsy? Well, in a sense, because our hero has been so traumatised by the violent demise of William Ottoway’s tropical Utopia that within days of returning home to England he sets off again, and in one direction only, north.

In the Lake District he meets an able fellow who starts to steer him down a path which, by way of accommodation hosts in Windermere, a Loch Ness monster, Iceland’s night sky and the University of Lapland, will in the end test his very concept of the human condition. Now that’s an autopsy and a half, and with such weight upon his mind in cogitation of the ultimate there’s no wonder poor old Andrew finds himself addled!

In process of all this, he’ll learn that our ill fortune is not written in the stars but in the composition of other people, start to appreciate the merits of literature over the drawbacks of ignorance, realise there’s a very real battle between the screen and the printed word, and be schooled appropriately on Frankenstein, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and, of course, ‘the writer who knew’.

He’ll even meet one of the characters in these books, someone of uncommon size and unfortunate feature who advances conspiracy theory on the current state of affairs in the world. After all this, and especially in discourse with Story herself, he’ll never look upon our earthly habitation in the same light again!