Anne spoke quietly, respectfully, of new curtains and a holiday planned for March. Lia nodded along. Their eyes fell for a moment on the liquid red drip, the silence like a burning prayer. He tries to scream, to shout, to call for the others. Nothing happens. The place remains as quiet as one would expect any left lung to be on a Thursday mid-afternoon. It is then that I realize – But the most distinctive character is a first-person voice, which (at least at first) I interpreted as Lia’s long-dormant, now reappearing cancer and one which sets out to explore the interior contours, pathways, vessels and organs of her body. There the voice encounters the aggressive Red chemotherapy treatment sent to destroy the cancer and the group of those who are part of Lia’s past and present (who he sees as Yellow, The Gardener, The Dove, The Fossil and so on) which in turn leads to his exploration bringing long dormant memories to life. An extraordinary debut, unlike anything I've read. Wildly inventive, poetic and poignant, this is a rare gem of a novel that took my imagination to new places and touched my heart." —Emma Stonex, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lamplighters

The girl was dead. She knew it. She could feel it; the new chill in the air, the slowing of the clouds, the dizzying shift of atmosphere when tragedy drops into an ordinary day like this. The crowd seemed to be multiplying and all Lia could think was – The cancer is our antagonist, but also a sort of guide through Lia’s life, as she’s reflecting on key moments from the past. I think the cancer’s perspective was very well-written, coming off sympathetic one moment to sinister in another. (The cancer points out that it is a part of Lia, having grown from her own cells.) The other key human characters are: Lia’s husband Harry (a University lecturer with a hobby as a Gardener); her mother Anne, now widowed after the death of her high-Anglican and deeply faithful Parish-Priest husband Peter and whose relationship with the rebellious Amelia has always been marked by mutual judgement and suspicion and who now elderly (and scrawny pigeon or generously Dove-like in appearance) struggles with how to deal with, as well as make theological sense of, her daughter’s illness; Matthew – how came to the Vicarage as a waif and stray when he was 15 and Lia 11, and who was effectively adopted as something of a (to Lia) preferred prodigal by Anne and Peter, before becoming an on-off lover of Lia for many years (starting when she was just 15) but who now is something of a Fossil-ised memory for her.Maddie Mortimer’s Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a gripping novel about Lia, a mother battling a devastating illness. The book has flashes between Lia’s present life with her fabulous husband Harry and wonderful daughter Iris, Lia’s past life, and the voice of her illness.

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. Would he continue to love Lia if she were to change into something else? Does love even continue like we think it does? Does love preserve itself? As Lia faces death, she is heavy with regret and guilt, and she also thinks of Matthew, the man she did not marry. Nevertheless, she finds solace in her loving relationship with her daughter. For Mortimer, her debut novel is also an elegy for her dead mother, to whom she was very close. As a writer, she had processed her cancer in columns. And she left the family diaries, the contents of which led Mortimer to the central theme of her novel:Here is a book to dance and sing about. An extraordinary, kaleidoscopic dive into language."— Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters 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 knew what her father would say next. He would use bible tongue. Her mother would go silent, and he would win. Because here is a fact: you can’t beat bible tongue. This was one of the few good things about having a vicar for a father – one could not easily turn away homeless strangers. It would not reflect well on the Church.Lia lay awake with her eyes closed. Feeling death’s breath on her face, his probing chubby fingers playing with her eyelashes, she listed off yellow things to keep afloat:

A final slow injection. A clear liquid disappearing inside. The most unnatural of sensations; the kind so severe it forces you to dissociate entirely from your body’s substance, Lia’s mother buys a book about cancer, which she then struggles to read as it is too advanced for her, meant instead for students of science. “But she was trying, at least,” she thinks, “trying to understand what was happening to her daughter’s body.” Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is Mortimer’s own attempt to try to understand what happens to an ailing, invaded body; to make some narrative sense out of an otherwise illogical, shattering experience. The novel is dedicated to her own mother, the television producer and writer Katie Pearson, who died of cancer in 2010.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. My soul got stretched- nourished, and (this isn’t meant to sound morbid) but I even feel a little more prepared for my own death —