Body Friend

A compelling and deeply insightful reckoning with illness, intimacy, estrangement and control, Body Friend is a novel of rare grace . . . Her sentences are a tonic, offering the clarity and exquisite pleasure of swimming in calm, cool water.

Madelaine Lucas, author of THIRST FOR SALT

Body Friend is a deeply intimate tribute to the fragile and porous self, written in prose of rare clarity and tenderness. I felt everything reading this book.

Claire Thomas, author of THE PERFORMANCE and FUGITIVE BLUE

Beautiful, razor sharp and infused with an intelligence that cuts to the bone.

Stephanie Bishop, author of THE ANNIVERSARY

I’ve never read anything like Katherine Brabon’s Body Friend. This book is a gift, an examination of a life in pain that isn’t at all painful to read. Brabon's fearless and clear-eyed exploration strips some power from pain and illuminates parts of the human experience that have yet to be written about—the virtue demanded from patients by the world and by ourselves, as well as the complexities of friendship.

Karen Havelin, author of PLEASE READ THIS LEAFLET CAREFULLY

An unforgettable study in intimacy. Expect to be wowed.

Oprah Daily

Utterly absorbing, entirely one-of-a-kind . . . Body Friend is an acutely observed exploration of chronic pain, revealing an uncommon richness and resonance behind experiences that so often feel dull and deadening. Beyond that, it’s an insightful and fresh meditation on the dualities we all negotiate between mind and body, control and submission, devotion and guilt, hope and despair . . . Insistent, rhythmic, immersive . . . Reading it feels like a plunge into cool water, both bracing and relieving, as intimately familiar as it’s surprising. The gift of this book will stay with me for a long time.

Helena de Bres, author of HOW TO BE MULTIPLE: THE PHILOSOPHY OF TWINS

Katherine Brabon distinguished herself with her first novels . . . but she has surpassed these and reached an early career pinnacle . . . Body Friend is a sculptured, sensory reflection on pain . . . The plot unfolds artfully and with precision to surprise and exceed readers’ expectations. Recommended for discerning readers of nuanced fiction.

Books + Publishing (Australia)

Body Friend is a kind of ghost story by stealth, an account of devotion, obsession and chronic pain that reveals a netherworld inside this one. It is told with such delicacy, with such a tender and insistent voice, that it becomes—uncannily, thrillingly—luminous.

Miles Allinson, author of FEVER OF ANIMALS and IN MOONLAND

Brabon writes some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read, and this book is both muted and raw, like pain itself. A love letter to a body, to relationship and connection, and to water, Brabon explores what we need and how we need it with astonishing wisdom and candour.

Laura McPhee-Browne, author of CHERRY BEACH and LITTLE PLUM

Body Friend is a remarkable and unflinching work that highlights, quietly and profoundly, the tedium and horror of living with chronic pain, but that also shows the lengths we go to understand ourselves, and to survive. Brabon’s writing is important, and brave.

Oliver Mol, author of TRAIN LORD

This is a novel of experiential heft and eloquence, which gives shape to the complexities of chronic pain.

Stella Prize Judges (Australia)

[An] elegant literary tale . . . Body Friend’s pitch-perfect conclusion offers intimacy, knowledge, and, perhaps, a precious glimmer of understanding.

Washington Independent Review of Books