Bed - David Whitehouse

Genre - Contemporary Fiction
My Rating - 5 Stars
Published  - March 1st 2012 by Canongate

Synopsis
Every family has a story. Mal was ours. He was always different from the other kids. Larger than life. Trips to pantomimes were ruined by him stripping off his clothes. But people loved him. Especially Lou; it seemed like their love would last forever. Then something happened that changed everything ...Mal grew up.

My Review
Bed is almost too good. Every once in a while I read something so special and unique to me that I want to hide it away from a world of prying eyes, criticism and make it mine. Despite being long listed for the Desmond Elliot Prize this novel hasn't got the critical acclaim it deserves, and it's 3.19 rating on Goodreads is quite frankly a disgrace.

So what went wrong and why is this book so misunderstood? 

Bed is about Mal, a discontented 25 year old who hounded by an unbearable ennui, decides he's going to bed, and staying there. After 20 years laying naked in bed doing nothing but watching TV and eating food cooked by his over-zealous mother he weighs 100 stone. But this isn't a book about being fat and if you're reading it in the hope of an insight into obesity then you should look elsewhere. 

Bed is a book about love, the bonds between family, how one persons selfishness can bring people together and at the same time tear them apart. Told from the perspective of Mal's younger brother (we never learn his name) he describes Mal as a planet which the family are orbiting. An ambitious young man, Mal left school telling the careers officer he wants to change the world, but like so many of us 2 years later he finds himself working a 9-5 office job with a steady girlfriend. This isn't the life Mal wants, he hates the banality of the weekly grind but feels that there is no way out. 

I view Mal as the ultimate individual, a man with a voracious appetite for the extraordinary who is unable to find fulfilment in the real world outside his dreams. So he goes to bed. The only rightful protest he can make against the cruel disappointment of living in a society that raises its children with an expectation of future greatness, and fails to deliver.

You may not like Bed, a lot of readers hated the graphic descriptions of Mal's obesity. It's certainly not a book for the squeamish and some scenes will probably shock you. But if you can get past the imagery and read Bed with an open mind it will repay you in buckets. Some books feel like they can tear a fissure in your life leaving an invisible before and after, it's an unsettling experience but also quite mind blowing. I love this book, a day later i'm still reeling.