Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Maddie Mortimer
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Maddie Mortimer
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Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

Author: Maddie Mortimer

Narrator: Tamsin Greig, Lydia Wilson

Unabridged: 12 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/28/2022


Synopsis

Named a Best Book of 2022 by Time, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal

Longlisted for the Booker Prize · Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize · Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize · Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize · Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Prize

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.

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 heart-breaking, this astonishing novel unearths the darkness and levity of one woman’s life to symphonic effect.

About Maddie Mortimer

Maddie Mortimer was born in 1996. She received her BA in English literature from the University of Bristol. She lives in London, where she works as a screenwriter and an author. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is her first novel.


Reviews

Beautifully Imperfect 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. Map......more

Winner of the 2022 Golden Reviewer Book of The Year. Winner of the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novel and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. 1st in my 2022 Booker Prize longlist rankings - my Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golden Retriever photo is here: https......more

Goodreads review by David

Maps is a barn burner of a debut by the talented Maddie Mortimer. On one level, it is about a family coming to terms with a cancer diagnosis, but it’s also an exploration of language and narrative and the use of new forms to tell a story. Most notable is Mortimer’s innovative use of performative typ......more

Goodreads review by Meike

Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022, longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize German: Atlas unserer spektakulären Körper Maddie Mortimer's ambitious debut novel tells the story of Lia, who is diagnosed with cancer for a second time - this time she is going to die,......more

I'm just... speechless. And crying.......more


Quotes

"Lydia Wilson and Tamsin Greig deliver complementary performances to tell the story of Lia, a British woman whose cancer has just come out of remission. Wilson narrates the sections of the novel from Lia’s perspective, jumping back and forth from Lia’s adolescence when she was growing up the daughter of a minister to the present when she is battling her cancer once again. Between Lia’s sections, Greig performs interludes from the perspective of Lia’s cancer, perfectly capturing the disease’s wry narrative voice as it remarks on the changes in Lia’s body. Wilson and Geig’s two performances work in harmony, giving listeners an emotionally intimate listening experience."