Maps Of Our Spectacular Bodies Maddie Mortimer by Maddie Mortimer 9781529069396, 1529069394 instant download after payment.

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.

"Mortimer has the same felicity with language as Jon McGregor, combining an incantatory prose style with imagery so acute it almost burns."  -  Daily Mail

Something gleeful and malign is moving in Lia’s body. It shape-shifts down the banks of her canals and leaks through her tissue, nooks and nodes. It taps her trachea like the bones of a xylophone. It’s spreading. Lia’s story is told, in part, by the very thing that’s killing her; a malevolent voice that wanders her systems, learning her from the inside out. 

The novel moves between her past and her present as we come to understand the people that have shaped her life.  In turn, each of these takes up their place in the battle raging within Lia’s body, at the centre of which dances the murderous narrator and a boy nicknamed ‘Red’ - the toxic chemo that is Lia’s last hope.

"... playful and surreal prose ... Using word placement, font, and shape to create images on the page, Mortimer deepens the reader’s engagement with the story and characters ... Through breathtaking attention to detail, Mortimer crafts a stunning novel that touches on the expanses one life can contain."   -  Laura Chanoux, Booklist

Maddie Mortimer 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. She is co-writing a TV series currently in development with Various Artists Ltd. In 2019, she completed the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is her first novel.