She imagined the horror of walking over, leaning down with the rest of the rats, pushing the girl’s hair gently off her face, to find that it was Iris, her Iris, her eyes stripped clean of their life. Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022, longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize

Toxic masculinity is high among Mortimer’s concerns. The violent passion of Lia’s romance with Matthew is implicit in the description of her first kiss: “It is a remarkable thing that Lia’s senses did not rupture/there and then, that no one was harmed in the making/of the kiss.” I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.Despite the violence of her bible tongue and the crippling silent codes she shrouded every inch of their lives in, for those five seconds, with slices of stained window light behind her, she was the saintliest thing in the world. Lia’s first bid for escape is a forbidden and ultimately toxic teenage romance with an older boy who is an acolyte of her father, but it is not until she leaves home that she finally manages to begin living life on her own terms. Opening her university acceptance letter is a sensory experience, unleashing the “burnt tomorrow scent” of freedom into the air. He also had the gift of prophecy granted to him by his father, which meant he knew the nature of Truth but would only ever reveal it if he was captured and squeezed into his real original state –

Before Lia put on the cold cap, she dampened and conditioned her hair in the hospital as if she were baptising a child. Anne found the pig picture later that afternoon. Amelia, she screamed, as if she were the one being wrenched up by her ankles, hung upside-down to dry. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a coming-of-age story at the end of a life. It’s the story of Lia, her husband and daughter as they deal with a terminal illness diagnosis that rewrites the family’s history from the inside out. Moving between Lia’s past and her present, the inside and outside of her body, Mortimer stretches the limit of the novel’s form, weaving poetry into her prose throughout. The novel was inspired by Mortimer’s mother, who died of cancer in 2010. Lia knew what her father would say next. He would use bible tongue. Her mother would go silent, and he would win. Because here is a fact: you can’t beat bible tongue.

Iris shrugged like these changes were the easiest things. The street exhaled. Lia watched her half skip through the hallway, the mouth of the house, before disappearing around a corner, down the throat, and felt drenched with the exhaustion of loving someone as much as she did in that moment. Round and round it went as the hours rung on, the rhythms and notes folding over each other like spells that could cure, that sore something, rising and rattling in awful interludes. Fineran said the novel was a “standout read” in a “very strong list”. Brown added: “It’s an incredibly inventive and, at times, genius novel, seamlessly blending competing values from science and religion to bluntness and subtlety.” Anne was wearing the same grey cardigan she wore for special days like Palm Sunday or the Pentecost. She had meant this thoughtfully, but it just made everything feel monumental and sombre. 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 –

It’s an incredibly inventive and, at times, genius novel, seamlessly blending competing values from science and religion to bluntness and subtlety. The style of Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is incredibly creative and literary, really taking form and pushing it to its limits in a way that remains still easily consumable for readers.’ There was a silence. It was that particular stuffed silence full of the winning of something. Then Peter was opening the kitchen door, ignoring the eavesdropping Lia and welcoming the stranger in with apologies, questions, suggestions of tea. Lia heard her mother sigh and shuffle quietly over to the kettle, spitting a final squashed and caged, 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. Calling the novel “sprawling and ambitious”, the Guardian review explains that Lia “shares the spotlight with ‘I, itch of ink, think of thing’, an impish, verbose and mysterious narrator that appears to be neither human nor nonhuman. Confined to its own short chapters early on, its signature bold type begins to infiltrate the standard third-person narration.”

Judge Tom Gatti on Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

Lia’s father had been a graceful, amicable man, who kept his faith close always; he wrapped it about his body tightly so that it never snagged or frayed, tripped or slipped. But pink was just a phase. Just a gesture of something or somewhere Iris wanted to get to. She moved through and out of it a little wiser, a little more sensitive to the causality of colour and consumption. Both doctor and Wikipedia said: when breast cancer spread to the lungs or liver it could be treated but could not be cured. 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.’ 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 still has hope . . . for more time, for more love, for more Iris.

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. 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. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is the lyrical tale of a woman, her body and the illness that coinhabits it. Told from the perspectives of Lia herself, her daughter Iris and the (callous? Cynical? Caring…?) voice of the disease itself, we follow her life after a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Despite the fact that my head is still too full with it to write a proper-form review, here are three things you need to know: