When Lia got home, Iris was curled up like a question mark in her very yellow room doing physics homework. Lia asked if she needed any help. She shook her head as if it was unlikely Lia could be of any – The evangelical in Anne had always recoiled at ‘The Arts’, for they had no obvious place in the useful, pious life. But Lia had something. It was not simply an ability to accurately depict the world, to replicate the exact gradient of a crow’s beak or the detailed creases of a hand, held out. There’s real flair there, one of Lia’s teachers had told her, a year or so ago, when Anne had been parked outside the school. The woman had rested her bony elbows on the car window ledge and Anne had stared hard at the chip shop sign in her ridiculous circular spectacles, the bent reflection of children queuing with their mothers on the other side of the street. She can capture the very essence of a thing, whilst… imbuing it with a… startling newness. So, while Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a novel about death, it is also about life and coming-of-age in a cruel, yet wonderful world. The other key human characters are: Lia’s husband Harry (a University lecturer with a hobby as a Gardener); her mother Anne, now widowed after the death of her high-Anglican and deeply faithful Parish-Priest husband Peter and whose relationship with the rebellious Amelia has always been marked by mutual judgement and suspicion and who now elderly (and scrawny pigeon or generously Dove-like in appearance) struggles with how to deal with, as well as make theological sense of, her daughter’s illness; Matthew – how came to the Vicarage as a waif and stray when he was 15 and Lia 11, and who was effectively adopted as something of a (to Lia) preferred prodigal by Anne and Peter, before becoming an on-off lover of Lia for many years (starting when she was just 15) but who now is something of a Fossil-ised memory for her.

Despite these obstacles, Iris I think comes out to be the strongest of all the characters in this book. Anne spoke quietly, respectfully, of new curtains and a holiday planned for March. Lia nodded along. Their eyes fell for a moment on the liquid red drip, the silence like a burning prayer. Lia twisted her arm round to inspect it further. Her elbows were dry, and the ink had buried itself into deep patterned lines. Rather paradoxically, and maybe even troublingly, I felt closer to, more intimate with, the cancer taking possession of Lia’s body than I did Lia. The third-person narration of Lia’s story, split between the present-day fallout from her diagnosis and her adolescent goings-on at a pastoral English vicarage twenty-plus years previous, is traditional, almost old-fashioned, clipped. The first-person voice of Lia’s cancer, on the other hand (really it’s inaccurate to call it ‘Lia’s cancer’: there’s a primal, ancient, omnipotent, uncontainable edge to it), is gleeful, jokerish, charismatic; Lewis Carol’s Cheshire Cat welcoming the carnage wrought by its cellular cousins. The cancer is at least one step ahead of Lia at all times and, therefore, so are we, the readers. In a remarkable moment of dramatic irony, we find out the cancer is in Lia’s brain before she’s told ‘ It’s in your brain. Here’ and then ‘ It’s everywhere’ by her oncologist (255). Lia had grown very fond of her doctor. He had been looking after her and her insides for eight long years on and off and was the perfect cancer doctor in every way, except for the fact that he had just gone and died.I think often of my early travelling days, when I was just getting accustomed to the theatre of disguise, finding ways of existing without being noticed. Because this is a remarkable book which combines a fresh voice and literary (as well as typographical) experimentation with a central idea which is universal (but I think seldom covered in fiction), resonant themes, and with a deep maturity in its empathetic understanding of people’s bodies and mind. Her mother was waiting next to the chair where it all happened, where they’d put her in the cap, rewire her, fix her fuses then plug her in like a Christmas tree, caged in

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a beautiful novel about death that feels completely alive, pulsing with tenderness and wit." — Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From In bed that night, stuffed on one third of each pudding, Harry stroked the milky middle of Lia’s arm, the bit that stayed the same colour and texture no matter how old she got. Lia could feel his fear through his fingertips, the caution and worry in his touch as he mumbled more battle phrases and she watched them charge him, accidentally, into sleep. With the weight of her body deepening into the mattress and an acute awareness of her own heartbeat thrumming under her chest, Lia reached out for the pen next to her bed. She opened the folds of her notebook and there, on her side, with her cheek pressed to the pillow and her hand quivering out in front of her, she wrote until she slept: 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. Judge Tom Gatti on Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

Judge Tom Gatti on Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

The Early Career Awards portfolio also includes the University of East Anglia (UEA) New Forms Award for an innovative and daring new voice in fiction, and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship, which recognises an exceptional writer who has experienced limiting circumstances or is currently underrepresented in literary fiction. I can’t quite remember the last time I physically cried over a book. This one broke my tear-free streak though. With its unflinching and raw honesty, its deeply relatable characters and striking delivery, it hit a nerve I didn’t know was still so raw within me. Statements like these never sat well in his voice. He thought too deeply for such certainty, observed the world too rigorously. Lia tried not to let it frustrate her. Even in a very strong list, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies was a standout read. To craft both a coming of age and a death narrative in one; create a moving and astute portrait of a family dealing with terminal illness in a way that is both sensitive and wise beyond the author’s years, and employ dazzlingly inventive elements that push the form of the novel, and yet remain in complete command of the narrative in hand would be hugely impressive even for an author much further in their career. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies marks Maddie Mortimer as a major new literary voice, and I Iook forward to seeing her career flourish.’ He reminds me of shadows lengthening from the edge of the frame, an accidental constellation, a preservation, a taunt, a secret history, very Mary Shelley, or grim late-night telly. He moves

It’s my favourite elbow ever, she said, very quietly, and Lia wished she hadn’t, for the only thing that made her stomach ache more than the ease of Iris’s brutality was her stunning self-awareness. At twelve years old, she was, perhaps, the wisest person When it was Iris’s turn to present her work to the class, she stood and held the sheet of paper up proudly.

About the author

Today I might trace the rungs of her larynx or tap at her trachea like the bones of a xylophone or cook up or undo some great horrors of my own because here is the thing about bodies: they are impossibly easy to prowl, without anyone suspecting a thing.” Peter would hide quietly behind his paper. Lia would sip her milk. Anne would scowl very hard at the space between the window and the sink.