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    Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
    Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
    Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
    Ebook501 pages7 hours

    Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

    By Maddie Mortimer

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Named a Best Book of 2022 by Time, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal

    Longlisted for the Booker Prize · Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize · Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize · Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize · Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Prize

    This lyrical debut novel is at once a passionate coming-of-age story, a meditation on illness and death, and a kaleidoscopic journey through one woman’s life—told in part by the malevolent voice of her disease.

    Lia, her husband Harry, and their beloved daughter, Iris, are a precisely balanced family of three. With Iris struggling to navigate the social tightrope of early adolescence, their tender home is a much-needed refuge. But when a sudden diagnosis threatens to derail each of their lives, the secrets of Lia’s past come rushing into the present, and the world around them begins to transform.

    Deftly guided through time, we discover the people who shaped Lia’s youth; from her deeply religious mother to her troubled first love. In turn, each will take their place in the shifting landscape of Lia’s body; at the center of which dances a gleeful narrator, learning her life from the inside, growing more emboldened by the day.

    Pivoting between the domestic and the epic, the comic and the heart-breaking, this astonishing novel unearths the darkness and levity of one woman’s life to symphonic effect.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateJun 28, 2022
    ISBN9781982181796
    Author

    Maddie Mortimer

    Maddie Mortimer was born in London in 1996. She received her BA in English Literature from the University of Bristol. Her writing has featured in The Times and her short films have screened at festivals around the world. In 2019 she completed the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is her first novel.

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    • 3/5
      “The only thing worse than death is knowledge of it coming.”

      Lia has cancer. She has a twelve-year-old daughter, Iris, and husband, Harry. There are three woven storylines. The first is Lia’s present day as she and her family deal with cancer. The second relates Lia’s past tumultuous relationship with her parents and first (overly idealized) boyfriend. The third is the cancer itself, which is given a voice that gets more prevalent as the book progresses.

      The author was fourteen years old when her mother died of cancer, so this book is based on personal experience. The writing is elegant. Mortimer is clearly talented, and this is a debut, which is impressive. However, I do not think I am the right reader for this book since it falls into the category I call "misery books," which I generally try to avoid. I did not care for the segments narrated by “cancer” – this magical realist element was way over the top and too anthropomorphic for me.

      I admired this book as an exercise in creative writing. I appreciated the poetic style but cannot think to whom I would recommend it. Certainly not to anyone currently or recently dealing with cancer in self or a loved one, and not to anyone feeling anxious or depressed. Many of my friends have loved this book, so my expectations were, perhaps, too high. I hope the author has experienced personal healing in the process of writing it.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies - Maddie Mortimer

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