Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer (Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize)

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

Longlisted for the Booker 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.

Review

"This striking novel takes a formally inventive approach to a woman’s terminal-cancer diagnosis... Sadness is not allowed to crowd out wit and joy, and Mortimer asks readers to think about death as something that 'does not happen in the first or third person, but in the second.'"—The New Yorker

"This is a touching, eye-opening perspective on life and illness like you've never read before."—Good Housekeeping

US Paperback Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner

Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 28, 2022

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Print length ‏ : ‎ 448 pages

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982181772

Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.38 inches

UK Paperback Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador

Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 31, 2022

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Print length ‏ : ‎ 440 pages

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1529069372

Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 1.54 x 6.02 x 9.17 inches