'Lobster Moth' is the story of Robert Gilmerton, a Scottish lepidopterist turned biologist and now a soldier recovering from his wounds in a stately convalescent home in Dorset in 1916, readying himself to return to the battlefield where he will die in October of that same year. To record his doomed convalescence he writes a pillow book, designed to be read in ten-minute sections at the end of the day. We learn about his father and his Japanese nanny, the doctors and other patients recovering from their terrible wounds, and his love of moths.
Dovetailed with Gilmerton's pillow book is the story of David Orr, a self-described "stupid actor" at the end of the twentieth century, and his efforts one sleepless night to find the keys to becoming Gilmerton for the film 'Almost A Hero'.
In its attempts to grasp the exact nature of things, this exhilarating book discusses myth, Shakespeare, the form of the novel, cinema, acting and biography, biology and war. It is a comedy on the attractions of insomnia, drowsiness and moths, " a little night reading" that reveals itself to be a seductive enquiry into the nature of perception.
