Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
- Author Maddie Mortimer
- Narrator Lydia Wilson, Tamsin Greig
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Run Time 12 hours and 21 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Coping with cancer, Family and health, Family life fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.
Titles Purchased
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Price p/Title
- £7.99
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
Longlisted for the Booker Prize
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize
Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize
'Original, memorable, shimmering' - Sarah Moss
'Restlessly inventive . . . delicate and persuasive' - The Guardian
Something gleeful and malevolent is moving in Lia’s body, learning her life from the inside out. A shape-shifter. A disaster tourist. It’s travelling down the banks of her canals. It’s spreading.
When a sudden diagnosis upends Lia’s world, the boundaries between her past and her present begin to collapse. Deeply buried secrets stir awake. As the voice prowling in Lia takes hold of her story, and the landscape around becomes indistinguishable from the one within, Lia and her family are faced with some of the hardest questions of all: how can we move on from the events that have shaped us, when our bodies harbour everything? And what does it mean to die with grace, when you’re simply not ready to let go?
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a story of coming-of-age at the end of a life. Utterly heart-breaking yet darkly funny, Maddie Mortimer’s astonishing debut is a symphonic journey through one woman’s body: a wild and lyrical celebration of desire, forgiveness, and the darkness within us all.
Critics Review
-
Remarkable . . . A tearjerker, but it’s hopeful too . . . Brave, inventive and mature
Sunday Times -
Here is a book to dance and sing about. An extraordinary, kaleidoscopic dive into language
Daisy Johnson, Man Booker-shortlisted author of Everything, Under -
Compelling and uplifting . . . undeniably impressive: Mortimer is clearly a talent to watch
Telegraph -
An original and memorable novel written in shimmering prose. The characters stayed with me long after I’d finished reading
Sarah Moss, Women's Prize-shortlisted author of Ghost Wall and Summerwater -
Lyrical and beautiful, this is a novel unlike anything else
Stylist -
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, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mercies
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