2022 NomineeDesmond Elliott PrizeThe Goldsmiths PrizeLonglisted for the Booker PrizeWinner of the Desmond Elliott PrizeShortlisted for the Goldsmiths PrizeLonglisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize‘Original, memorable, shimmering’ - Sarah MossLia has only one child, Iris; her magical, awkward, endlessly creative daughter who has just entered the battleground of her teenage years. Lia and Iris have always been close, but there is a war playing out inside Lia’s body, too, and everything is about to change. As she confronts what might be the end, memories of her own childhood and a passionate love affair come rushing into her present, unearthing buried secrets and her family’s deepest fears. But Lia hopes: for more time, for more love, for more Iris.Dancing between voices within Lia’s body and without, flitting back and forth in time, this sweeping, dazzling story of a life and what it is to let go marks the arrival of an extraordinary novelist.'Restlessly inventive . . . delicate and persuasi
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2022'Original, memorable, shimmering' - Sarah Moss'Extraordinary, kaleidoscopic' - Daisy Johnson'Restlessly inventive . . . delicate and persuasive' - The GuardianSomething 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-
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 lifetold in part by the malevolent voice of her disease.Lia, her husband Harry, and their beloved daughter, Iris, are a precisely balanced family of three. With Iris struggling to navigate the social tightrope of early adolescence, their tender home is a much-needed refuge. But when a sudden diagnosis threatens to derail each of their lives, the secrets of Lia's past come rushing into the present, and the world around them begins to transform. Deftly guided through time, we discover the people who shaped Lia's youth; from her deeply religious mother to her troubled first love. In turn, each will take their place in the shifting landscape of Lia's body; at the center of which dances a gleeful narrator, learning her life from the inside, growing more emboldened by the day. Pivoting between the domestic and the epic, the comic and the hea
