Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

June 13, 2022
A British woman’s breast cancer returns in Mortimer’s poignant and inventive debut, told in part by the disease. Lia, 43 and a children’s author, is devastated to learn her cancer is back after a two-year absence. Her professor husband, Harry, assures her they’ll fight it, while Lia’s unsure of how to tell their 12-year-old daughter, Iris. Meanwhile, in flashbacks, Lia reveals how as a teenager she and a boy named Matthew, a student of Lia’s vicar father, become secret lovers. When her parents find out, they make other arrangements for Matthew, and Lia leaves for university in London. Later she receives a postcard from Matthew telling her to join him in Italy. Their paths converge and diverge a couple more times, while in the present Lia and her family struggle to manage her worsening illness. The cancer intrudes with bursts of modernist lyricism (“If I could rub my hands together, gnarl out a poisonous twat-cackle, pick open their dreams or leave my own little marks in their diaries, I would”), which can feel excessive, but the author does a good job tying everything together. Though this first outing is a bit baggy, Mortimer shows promise. Agent: Zoe Waldie, RCW Literary.

Starred review from June 1, 2022
English novelist Mortimer's debut novel is a poetic story of a woman and the cancer that consumes her body. In playful and surreal prose, the narrative is voiced in part by Lia's cancer itself as it moves through her organs, tracing the story of her life and the lives of her husband, Harry, their daughter, Iris, and her previously estranged mother, Anne. Using word placement, font, and shape to create images on the page, Mortimer deepens the reader's engagement with the story and characters. Lia, an artist, grew up in a religious household and developed an all-encompassing relationship with Matthew, who moved in with her family when she was 12. Her body still carries the memories of their at times brutal entanglement years later. Iris is at the brink of adolescence while coping with her mother's illness. Harry tries to care for his wife while struggling with the inevitability of her death. Anne's guilt over the rifts with her daughter run up against her inability to express herself. Through breathtaking attention to detail, Mortimer crafts a stunning novel that touches on the expanses one life can contain.

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