Jackdaw Affliction, by S.G. Hyde

Memory is a tricky thing. Reality is fragile. And the past never stays buried.

From bike rides through the suburbs of 1980s Hampshire to the claustrophobic grind of adulthood, Billy Cooper’s life is shaped by loss, fractured family ties, and the creeping onset of a degenerative disease. As his body betrays him and grief corrodes what remains, Billy turns inward—into recollections that blur, narratives that contradict, and personas that may never have existed.

Jackdaw Affliction is a descent into memory’s labyrinth, where trauma, illness, and longing distort the line between truth and invention. Told with brutal honesty, warped humour and hallucinatory edge, S. G. Hyde’s novel explores what it means to live when the ground of reality keeps shifting beneath your feet.

At once harrowing and tender, it is a story of survival through imagination, self-deception, and the desperate human need to stitch meaning out of chaos. A haunting meditation on identity, illness, and loss, sprinkled with dark comedy, this is fiction at its most unsettling and raw.