Great piece of philosophical literature. Well annotated and translated. Excellent, 5 stars

A man born without the ability to feel either pain or emotion is definitely an interesting character, but an interesting character alone does not a great novel make. Andrew Miller has taken a great idea and created a mediocre book. While I don't have to have every detail spelled out, I would like to see characters working towards some sort of goal, even if it's just to become a better person. In Ingenious Pain, Miller simply reports random events in the life of James Dyer. There is no goal, no plot, no point. (We already know that a life without emotion is really no life at all!) The author has simply cast us to sea and let us drift. Miller also denies us access to the characters' thoughts (a typical beginner's mistake). Had we been privy to those thoughts (especially Dyer's) the novel would have been greatly enriched. In my opinion, Miller is being far too coy with us and coyness in the service of plot is really not fair to the reader. Finally, while Miller's writing style is definitely not the purple prose of Anne Rice, it is much too flowery (the absolute mark of the amateur...ask your writing teacher!). Great books don't need gimmicks. Ingenious Pain is a wonderful premise that falls far short of the mark.

James Dyer, Andrew Miller's main character in Ingenious Pain is still with me. For a character who has no emotion to begin with, that's kind of odd.

When I first read taht James Dyer had no emotion, I expected --silly me-- a character who was fairly flat. But Andrew Miller proves to me that a character without emotion with only intellectual brilliance but no emotional intelligence would naturally fall into pride and arrogance. His character, James Dyer, is uncaring, arrogant and belittling of other people's pain. When he becomes a famous ultra reputable doctor, he only cares about money.

And when he becomes mad because he finally understands those emotions he has always belittled: love, fear, sorrow, it is perfectly understandable.

I liked the ending, too. He's finally redeemed. It's not ultra dramatic like those plot-driven American Blockbuster movies, but it rings true.

I don't remember ever reading a first novel that captured my attention so completely while simultaneously challenging all of my standard expectations for fiction. Almost everything about this book was a pleasant surprise. Set in the Eighteenth Century, this somewhat picaresque tale follows the life of James Dyer, a man born without the ability to feel pain, from conception until his death. The book actually begins with Dyer's autopsy, a scene that is puzzling (since there is no exposition) and brutally ugly. I was tempted to put the book down, since for the first thirty or so pages scenes and characters appear with no context and I had very little idea of what anything meant. That would have been a mistake. As soon as the author leaps back to the day of Dyer's conception and the story begins to move forward I was hooked. Because James cannot feel pain he never develops empathy with others and grows to be a remarkably capable surgeon but a very cold man. The story of his awakening as a real human being, which occupies the last quarter of the novel, is very moving without the least traces of sentimentality.

The cast of characters that Andrew Miller has invented as supporting players are all interesting and complex. The stages of Dyer's life, from a childhood on a farm (where he was thought to be an idiot since he didn't speak), through a stint as a medicine show freak, then as a 'specimen' of human oddities by a wealthy collector of such, to a life at sea, the building of a successful practice as a surgeon, affairs, duels, flight, a dangerous journey to St. Petersburg and then the collapse of his sanity and his health resulting in a stint in London's notorious Bedlam hospital, are all told in a style that while borrowing from some conventions of eighteenth century writing never try to ape it. I loved the sound of Miller's words and the shape of the sentences. This is a book I could have enjoyed reading aloud.

This is a complex book on many levels, but not an inaccessable one. The story - once into it - is clear and the characters are cleanly drawn. There are enough ups and downs of fortune to keep even the most jaded fiction fan interested while at the same time the complexity of character, language and theme provide much for those who love to puzzle out the hidden meanings in literature.

This was a fascinating book and I was sorry to see it end. I really recommend it to anyone who wants something that can challenge the mind while satisfying all reader's love of a good story.