Ours is an age of acceleration and dislocation. The pandemic hurtled us from the end of one decade to the early years of another without pause for reflection, and we can’t quite connect who we are now with who we were – or what the world was – in the Before Times. So it’s fascinating that Aidan Cottrell-Boyce’s thrillingly ambitious debut novel, The End of Nightwork, features a narrator who suffers from a rare hormonal condition that dramatically accelerates the ageing process. At 13, Pol finds he has undergone a “heterochronous shock”, ageing him 10 years overnight – and leaving him there. Now in his early 30s, married to teacher Caroline and living in Kilburn with their young son, Jesse, Pol still has the appearance of a sprightly 23-year-old. His fast-forwarded development feels strangely apt for our times.
The details of his sudden teenage transformation are startling: “They had to shave me every day, because the beard and body hair growth was so rapid it was getting in the way of the doctors who were trying to operate on me … They were trying to stop my head from growing too quickly.” The medics were watching “a boy turning into a man before their very eyes”. While tales of metamorphosis are deep in the collective unconscious, shapeshifting myths normally resonate because of their moral framework, or at least act to reinforce the commonplace that everything is subject to change. For Pol, his transformation seems to carry no such reassuring meaning.
