“’I always get this way after a migraine. Mood swings. Excitable, euphoric even. Then I have to piss. A huge amount. Then I get depressed.’”
Extreme weather conditions have precipitated a mass-disabling event. Following a decade of snow, a thaw has occurred, accompanied by storms and barometric changes, that have led to an epidemic of migraine.
Society has reordered to adjust to this new world, and Ellis’s ex-girlfriend, a viral migraine-artist, has reaped the benefit. Ellis, on the other hand, was one of few Londoners not to experience migraine; a source of mutual tension. However, the onset of his first attack precipitates a period of postdromal soul-searching, and a psychogeographic quest to win back his woman.
Fisher has made a wise choice in exploring migraine by means of climate collapse. In so doing, the author captures the archetypal nature of the neurological condition that swells, peaks and descends with the energy of a storm. His descriptions of migraine are lyrical, and wisely move beyond the narrow representation of migraine as solely a pain disorder, to instead encompass the “wild affective states” or “visual and haptic hallucinations”, known commonly as migraine “aura”.
READ MORE
“There was a giddiness, buffeted by a rising panic, as the lights – are they lights? Or absences banded with light – whirled in my periphery.”
Most impressive is Fisher’s ability to transmute the uncanny energy of a migraine attack to the page through his disorientating prose. It is this same disorientating effect, however, that presents a challenge to other elements of the novel. Marketing material suggests that Migraine explores what a society might look like if chronic pain were the norm. However, by the end of the book, Fisher’s vision for such a society remains fuzzy, a paradox between the uncanny “aura” of this world, and the affirming language he uses to describe it. Were this novel to be adapted for screen, I cannot envisage how the world may look.
Migraine concludes with a poignant reflection upon the ability of illness to open pathways to vulnerability that can serve to enrich the lives of the sick and those around them. It is affecting, as is much of Fisher’s prose. However, if the neurological condition is not a subject of interest, the reader may find Migraine to be, ultimately, an unsatisfying experience.
