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Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
- Narrated by: Lydia Wilson, Tamsin Greig
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
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Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
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Summary
Longlisted for the Booker Prize
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize
Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize
Something gleeful and malevolent is moving in Lia’s body, learning her life from the inside out. A shape-shifter. A disaster tourist. It’s travelling down the banks of her canals. It’s spreading.
When a sudden diagnosis upends Lia’s world, the boundaries between her past and her present begin to collapse. Deeply buried secrets stir awake. As the voice prowling in Lia takes hold of her story, and the landscape around becomes indistinguishable from the one within, Lia and her family are faced with some of the hardest questions of all: how can we move on from the events that have shaped us, when our bodies harbour everything? And what does it mean to die with grace, when you’re simply not ready to let go?
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a story of coming-of-age at the end of a life. Utterly heart-breaking yet darkly funny, Maddie Mortimer’s astonishing debut is a symphonic journey through one woman’s body: a wild and lyrical celebration of desire, forgiveness, and the darkness within us all.
Critic reviews
"Original, memorable, shimmering." (Sarah Moss)
"Extraordinary, kaleidoscopic." (Daisy Johnson)
"Restlessly inventive...delicate and persuasive." (The Guardian)
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What listeners say about Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- sarah jane mason
- 22-02-24
Beautiful
A beautiful study of life and death but ultimately the very human experience of loss and of the grief it brings.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Red
- 05-08-22
LOVED THIS BOOK
I thought this audible book was absolutely mesmerising. Can’t recommend highly enough. Superb writing and the performance of the two readers was as I say mesmerising.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- eva
- 01-11-22
brillliant listen
absolutely loved this book, moving, gripping, a really special book and great narrators too
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Shopper, viewer and reader
- 28-07-23
A beautiful book
Maps of our Spectacular Bodies charts life, love and death.
From coming to age to end of life brilliant new author Maddie Mortimer takes us on an unforgettable journey.
Highly original and compelling in her writing style using stream of consciousness, humour, encyclopaedic facts and beautiful prose to chart the journey of a life and those close to her.
Highly recommended!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- EEL
- 21-08-22
Dual narration works well
As a printed book, this title makes liberal use of typographical features to generate meanings in addition to what the words themselves say: text is shaped into pictures (e.g. a dove), undulates along the page, is given unusual spacing, put into different fonts and font sizes, and generally exploited as another semantic resource. Audio can't do that, obviously, so the recording here opts to have two (both fantastic) actors, who voice the bold-face type (Greig) and the rest (Wilson). Occasionally Grieg paces her delivery to reflect odd layout, but most of the typographical differentiations found in the visual/physical book are lost.
Those wanting to listen without a hard copy should, however, feel confident in doing so. Virtually nothing missing from the audio here makes the book incomprehensible. The dual voices in fact render some of the parts where internal and external speakers dialogue much more readily and immediately understandable. If I were being unkind, I might argue that the qualities of the audio here point to the lack of necessity, perhaps even redundancy, in the strange visual features of the book, which I would imagine some readers might find rather off-putting. They perhaps unnecessarily over-complicate a visual reading experience in a way that the audio reading cuts right through.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ruth F
- 07-02-24
What an incredible narration, and so beautifully written.
what an incredible narration, it was more of a performance than a narration, and so beautifully written. I was enraptured. Loved this.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ms.M H Clark
- 30-01-24
An absolutely riveting and poignant story of life and that life slowly unwinding to cancer.
The language. the exploration of the characters of Lia’s parents, her friend Connie, her husband Harry her first and enduring relationship with her almost brother Matthew, each their own interests and abilities and her own way with words and drawing. The exploration of her extraordinary bond with her clever and original daughter with her journey through vicious bullying. The breath of the story held my attention to the end. It was beautifully read and acted and one of the best and most original books on Audible
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- George the dog
- 08-02-23
Worrying...
This book is touching and has a clearness about it. Like water, like a stream. A good first novel, I enjoyed listening to it very much. It really is a map of our lives.
I'm not being terribly literate; It is a patient, complex, insightful and imaginative story, I dearly hope completely fictional and not based upon personal experience, though I sense there are some oersonal truths portrayed. Thank you.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- TheRealMrsB
- 10-10-22
Engaging and reflective
Stunning audio book. I think it deserves a second listen or read the physical copy of the book because it is so thought provoking. The narration was perfect. Definitely one my favourite audiobooks so far.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 18-02-23
Riveting
Absolutely loved this recording. It is so alive and engrossing. It lives on in your mind long after it has finished.
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