Robinson’s startling debut takes us deep into the flawed, combative world of a severe epileptic. Lily O’Connor – rebellious, independent, troubling and very ill – inhabits a seedy and run-down Blackpool. The descriptions of Lily’s violent fits are extremely disconcerting, and Robinson expertly captures the dislocation of day-to-day life for someone in thrall to a debilitating and seemingly random condition. Layout and typography are used jarringly to demonstrate the effects of the illness, and to show how traumatising the fits are to Lily. The result is a novel of illness and involuntarily altered states that presents reality as something unpleasant and tentative.
Yet this isn’t just a story about epilepsy. Lily is damaged, abused, vengeful and confused, and the narrative takes her from the death of her hated mother through family reunion and troubled relationships to final, uncertain happiness. She travels to London to find her brother but instead – initially, at least – finds only more complication, before eventual resolution via a friendship with Mel, her lesbian landlady. Gradually, the nightmares from the past abate.
Robinson’s prose is taut, and Lily an unnervingly honest and frank narrator. Not only that, she’s great company. While the descriptions of London occasionally veer towards the prosaic and clichéd (King’s Cross is pandemonium, everything ‘moving so fast and vicious and panicky’), ‘Electricity’ is nevertheless an impressive achievement.
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