Until mankind solves the problem of death, most people will reach the stage in life when their mortal coil unravels and they end up in the “safe hands” of an NHS-run hospital. Chapman’s Odyssey is the story of Harry Chapman as he faces the reality of being in a place “where he had long feared to be.”

Like Paul Bailey, Harry is a writer at the age when his eyes weep for no reason, and when he might expect an award for lifetime achievement. Harry is similarly born of working-class stock and escapes his material conditions through a fascination and engagement with the arts. He began his career on stage before turning to the pen, had a stint teaching in the United States, and is gay

Harry is hospitalised after suffering acute abdominal pain from an illness that remains stylistically vague. Aside from a brief return to Harry’s home, the novel is located entirely within the Zoffany Ward. The realities of his stay are vividly drawn and it isn’t a strain to grow fond of the nurses who become Harry’s companions and eventually his appreciative audience. Harry, “the man with a thousand poems”, assumes the role of the ward’s performance poet, reciting Shakespeare and Marlowe, and even a poem by Nazim Hikbet that doesn’t go down as well. We experience the turnover of the infirm as they fade in and out the ward, living and dying from diseases that we never get told about. The highlight of these encounters involves the “loquacious Mr. Breeze” who claims to be in possession of T.S. Eliot’s dentures and unsuccessfully attempts to flog them to Harry for £500.

But Chapman’s Odyssey is far from a stationary tale and Eliot isn’t the only literary allusion. Most of the book is comprised of Harry’s illusory interactions and episodes with literary characters and people who’ve had a major impact on his life. Following Harry’s insistence that he receives no visitors, these spirits fill the visitation void as he drifts in and out of consciousness. There are family members, such as his mother, on call to offer persistent chastisement, and lovers in the form of Ralph the school bully-cum-gas fitting sexual partner.

Bailey elegantly guides the narrative through time and space, taking Harry to his soon-to-be father in the dismal trenches of Paschendale in one breath, and then reliving a sexual memory with a jock called Duane in another. Literary characters and figures alike turn up for their say, such as Melville’s Bartleby and Dickens’ Pip; there is even a feisty encounter between Chapman’s mother and Virginia Woolf, the former holding her own against an unsavoury rendition of the author. A particularly pleasurable moment features a bizarre tennis match during which competitors from various generations appear in each round; Bailey is a master of transitioning between the ordinary and the strange without any signs of stress.

Chapman’s Odyssey is a poignant meditation on one of mankind’s eternal questions; that is, how do people make sense of their time on earth when they’re in the final stages of their life? Those who join Harry on his journey will no doubt be surprised to hear that the book was close to not making it to the shelves; were that the case, we’d have been deprived of Bailey’s inventive and engaging take on a vital enquiry.

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