The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold Book

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh was published in July 1957. It was Waugh's penultimate full length work of fiction and is a largely autobiographical account of a period of hallucinations caused by bromide poisoning that he'd experienced in early 1954.

If the novel is accurate this must have been a grim and somewhat scary experience. Most of the action takes place on a cruise ship called the SS Caliban which is on its way to Ceylon. Some of the bizarre hallucinations are related in a humorous way however what Waugh describes must also have been a deeply disturbing period.

I quite enjoyed it but it is undeniably slight, and I'm not convinced this particular piece of autobiography warranted a novel.

3/5



Here's the blurb....

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold remains one of Eveyln Waugh's most remarkable and self-revealing works. Three years before he wrote it, Waugh suffered "a brief bout of hallucination" similar to the one that besets Mr. Pinfold in this wildly witty and occasionally frightening novel.

A successful, middle-aged novelist with a case of "bad nerves," Gilbert Pinfold embarks on a recuperative trip to Ceylon. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Mr. Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, loud revival meetings. He can only infer that somewhere concealed in his room an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship. And then, instead of just sounds, he hears voices. But they are not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frightening intimate way, about him