Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer 🗺️
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

🗺️ The plot: When Lia receives an unexpected diagnosis, the news upends her life and those of her husband, teenage daughter, and elderly mother. Meanwhile, her body knows nothing of the word "cancer", just that Something is moving through it. Malevolent, yes. But also tricksy. Playful. It gambols through Lia's cells and the memories stored in her body, the loves and hurts she carries with her. These things are a part of her, bodily - what does it mean to let go? Will she or those she loves ever be ready for that?

When @mostardentlyalice was picking my TBR, perhaps it was a given that Maps would be on it. She has been championing this book since its release and I can totally see why - it is a triumph.

Written in playful, poetic style that takes a moment to acclimatise to then carries you along like a fairground ride, this book is both a tour through one woman's life, the ups and downs of desire and despair, and a portrait of a family struggling with anticipatory grief.

Half the story is narrated by Lia's cancer: a nymph that rummages through the mythic landscape of her body, describing organs and passages as fantastical landscapes peopled by dream-creatures from her life. It is the villain of the story, hungry to see and claim everything, determined it must survive. But these things also make it very human, very like Lia herself, not truly a villain. This is maybe the genius of the book, its ability to show that death is contained within life without simply saying it, of forcing the reader to even momentarily surrender to the acceptance of that fact. It's a grieving feeling, one of the good ones.

Naturally, to carry all this off, the writing is bonkers and beautiful and so brim-full of compassion for our past and future selves. What an absolute knockout of a debut!

🗺️ Read it if you like Ali Smith or Jessica Andrews (the vignette style of storytelling is similar here). Extra points for exploration of mother and daughter relationships and first love!

🚫 Avoid if cancer or anticipatory grief are too heavy for you to read about right now. Also if you hate experimental prose or poetry.

Content Warnings

agnesbebon's review

Go to review page

5.0

Content Warnings

abvi's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

jiscoo's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional reflective sad

4.75

finding it hard to breathe after finishing this book.
heartbreaking, original, intelligent, empathetic, and made to be read and reread compulsively.

Content Warnings

deedireads's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is an unconventional, heartbreaking, extremely beautiful book about a woman dying of cancer. It’s part poetry, part narrative, and unlike anything else.

For you if: You like books that play with language in unique ways, and you don’t mind feeling a little bit unmoored in the story as you read.

FULL REVIEW:

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. I’m so glad it was, because otherwise I would probably never have picked it up — and it was both heartbreaking and incredibly beautiful. In fact, I’m shocked this didn’t make the shortlist.

Part poetry, part narrative, this book is super unconventional. It’s about a woman named Lia, who has cancer. It alternates between sections that feel more traditional, in which we get Lia’s story (both her present-day relationship with her husband and fierce daughter, and her heavy past), and those that are told (abstractly) from the POV of what most people interpret as her cancer itself.

If you love books that play with language in creative ways — including poetic, unconventional typesetting — you will love this book. On the other hand, if you’re uncomfortable feeling a little bit unmoored inside a story, you may not. If you stop to try to interpret or “understand” every paragraph, you’ll quickly become frustrated. Because so much reads like poetry, you have to let yourself sink in and be swept away, trusting Mortimer to carry you out the other side (she will). I listened along as I read in print (do NOT skip the print copy, I beg you), and that approach really helped me do it.

Mortimer wrote this book in tribute to her mother who died of cancer, and the rendering is exquisite. The slight dizziness of the reading experience interprets the experience of having a loved one (or self) with a terminal illness, the foreignness and familiarity of the body, the inescapable momentum of it all. Where is the line between self and body, trauma and invasion? Perhaps there is none.

There is a lot more I could say — about Iris, Lia’s daughter, and how expertly she was written. About Lia’s difficult mother, or upbringing in religion, or relationship with her sexuality. About the complicated kind of abuse and toxicity that shaped her life. But I’m running out of space! So please, do yourself a favor and read this book.

Content Warnings