Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies: Longlisted for the Booker Prize

Product Information

But the focus is easily distracted. There is a passage during which sperm cells moving through a uterus are compared to the thousands of people forced to leave the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 1986. The voice set in bold type concludes the extended analogy by saying it is “a common misconception that creation and discovery don’t require / rather a lot of destruction”. In this context, harnessing the suffering of the former residents of Pripyat is bewildering.

Despite its title, not every character in Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies has a body. Lia shares the spotlight with “I, itch of ink, think of thing”, an impish, verbose and mysterious narrator that appears to be neither human nor nonhuman. Confined to its own short chapters early on, its signature bold type begins to infiltrate the standard third-person narration. In the final sections, the voice and Lia are inseparable. The hybrid character describes “the quiet passing of the I / into the vast and / boundless / you”. He reminds me of shadows lengthening from the edge of the frame, an accidental constellation, a preservation, a taunt, a secret history, very Mary Shelley, or grim late-night telly. He moves Lia twisted her arm round to inspect it further. Her elbows were dry, and the ink had buried itself into deep patterned lines. every other person that has ever lived just quietly pass on through them at some time or another. I find this thought surprisingly moving.Overall, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a deeply moving novel with unexpected twists, written in a style that I haven’t seen before, a treasure, haunting, lingering.

In is interesting in the interview linked above to see Mortimer comment on how her "formally ambitious" novel also developed characterisation and heart: "I started writing the book when I was 23, and for all the play and ‘fizz’ there were also simple delights that emerged unexpectedly along the way. I learnt that a fully realised character or frank, honest dialogue can be just as poetic as a perfectly constructed metaphor, or a bit of clever word play." contained, to have these walls of skin and a singular sense of self that sloshes and slaps around inside of us like water on the inside of a well.”

About the author

Her coat hung limply on the corner of the door like some stuffed and sorry scarecrow, skewered deep into its sacred patch of land, waving away the world. Anne was wearing the same grey cardigan she wore for special days like Palm Sunday or the Pentecost. She had meant this thoughtfully, but it just made everything feel monumental and sombre. When Lia got home, Iris was curled up like a question mark in her very yellow room doing physics homework. Lia asked if she needed any help. She shook her head as if it was unlikely Lia could be of any – Mortimer perfectly developed her characters. None of them are saints, and she didn’t lean on cliches to carry Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies. Outside the hospital, Harry was waiting in the car park. Anne smiled politely at him and kissed Lia’s cheek, accidentally grazing the edge of her lip. Lia tried to pretend it wasn’t the most intimate moment they had shared in years.

What are you doing waiting there for? she said, leaping into Lia’s arms, and Lia felt the street hold its breath, the swelling of its surfaces, the gradual muffle of its parking cars and sycamores. How unusual, Anne said, adjusting her body in the seat, hoping the exchange had reached an acceptable conclusion.Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022, longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize My aunt has it my dad had it my grandma my neighbour my dog my babysitter’s boyfriend’s mum has it. Really this description only touches the surface of a novel which is all about what goes on underneath that surface (both literally and figuratively – although the very distinction between literal and figurative, physical and mental, experience and memory is one the book implicitly rejects). He smiled widely and pressed his palm to his wife’s cheek. She kissed his wrist and said, I don’t want to die. He took a heavy breath. It smelt of earth. Every Sunday Harry would fall asleep with stains of their garden still on his hands. It is important not to put gloves on, he would say, it is important to feel the soil, let the dirt get under your fingernails, you need to hear through tips of skin what it is the world wants.

When Iris was seven, her teacher asked everyone to write down what their parents’ jobs were and also suggested they drew a picture as a Creative Exercise. As she confronts what might be the end, memories of her own childhood and a passionate love affair come rushing into her present, unearthing buried secrets and her family’s deepest fears. But Lia still has hope . . . for more time, for more love, for more Iris. Iris looked up to the ceiling and laughed one of her wide-open golden laughs and said, No no no, you’re just saying that because you’re old. Old people can be bright too. Mortimer certainly deserves praise for inventiveness, but her approach isn’t entirely without precedent. Over the years, we have already met all manner of unlikely narrators. Remember Nutshell (2016), Ian McEwan’s re-working of Hamlet as told by an unborn foetus? Jenny Diski’s Like Mother (1988), meanwhile, was narrated by a baby born without a brain. In My Name is Red (1998), Orhan Pamuk utilised a whole chorus of strange narrators, from a severed head, a tree, a gold coin, and even the colour crimson. And Markus Zusak went all in when he decided to have the grim reaper himself narrate The Book Thief (2005).I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize and I have to say up front that a debut novelist, and in particular one in her mid-20s, simply has no right to write a book this good. Iris remembered staring at her shit in the toilet bowl after two weeks of beetroot, feeling superhuman. Both expansive and intimate, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is an intricate portrait of a life hurtling towards the inevitable. An extraordinary debut." —Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies I can’t quite remember the last time I physically cried over a book. This one broke my tear-free streak though. With its unflinching and raw honesty, its deeply relatable characters and striking delivery, it hit a nerve I didn’t know was still so raw within me. This book is definitely sad so if you like sad stories, you might want to give this a go. Also, this book really reminded me of The Book Thief which has the narrator as the voice of death. So if you enjoyed the style of The Book Thief, you might want to try Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies.