Our Monstrous Bodies
About this audiobook
My eyes snapped open and I saw something else in the mirror, something else that wasn’t me...
After an ill-omened romance with a horror cinephile, Brooke travels to Vancouver to care for her estranged sister, Izzy, who is facing reproductive surgery.
Inside Izzy’s rapidly decaying apartment building, its halls stalked by an ominous crone known only as Medusa, new frictions emerge and old wounds reopen. Brooke soon finds traces of horror bleeding from the screen and into their reality.
As the lives of these three women kaleidoscope and knot together in supernatural exchange, each strives to claim her autonomy within the increasingly claustrophobic environment. And when Brooke herself begins to exhibit strange symptoms, Izzy’s care and concern for her sister soon turn to unhinged obsession, blurring boundaries until one question remains: who –– or what –– will survive when all has unravelled?
Through the dual lenses of art and horror cinema, Emma Cleary brilliantly dissects themes of loneliness, motherhood, and bodily autonomy in a haunting literary debut that blooms with the dark desires we suppress or to which we surrender.
About the author
Emma Cleary is a writer and editor from Liverpool, now living in Vancouver. She is editor-in-chief at Geist magazine and former managing editor of PRISM international. Emma holds a PhD in literature and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. OUR MONSTROUS BODIES (published in the US and Canada as AFTERBIRTH) is her first novel.
