Garden of Earthly Bodies

Oliver Sally Oliver

Description

An exquisitely eerie and unsettling speculative novel that grapples with questions of trauma, identity, and the workings of memoryMonths after her sister's death, Marianne wakes up to find a growth of thick black hairs along her spine. They defy her attempts to remove them, instead proliferating, growing longer. The hairs, Marianne's doctor tells her, are a reaction to trauma, developed in the wake of the loss of her sister, Marie. Her doctor recommends that Marianne visits Nede, a modern, New Age rehabilitation center in a remote forest in Wales where the patients attend unorthodox therapy sessions and commune with nature. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As the hairs on her back continue to grow, the past starts to entangle itself with the present and the borders of her consciousness threaten to disintegrate. She finds herself drawn back compulsively to the memory of Marie, obsessing over the impulse that drew her sister toward death and splintered her family apart. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain-but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself. Haunting, lyrical, and introspective, Garden of Earthly Bodies is a startlingly accomplished and original debut about the bond between two sisters, love and its limits, and our inability to ever truly to know the minds of others. With an intense and precise attention to the internal workings of minds and bodies and a disturbing speculative plot, the novel welcomes an assured new voice to the genre.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 07 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647005689
• Langue: English

Extrait

This edition first published in hardcover in 2022 by
The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS
195 Broadway, 9th floor
New York, NY 10007
www.overlookpress.com
First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Oneworld Publications
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [e-mail] or the address above.
Copyright 2022 Sally Oliver
Cover 2022 Abrams
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932220
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5935-2
eISBN: 978-1-64700-568-9
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
PROLOGUE
Do you think this is a mistake?
Charlotte directed the question to her friend Nick.
They were standing by the side of a hole in the ground, roughly two feet deep. It was acquiring more depth by the second as they watched five men shovel great mounds of earth. The men shared a somnolent expression, like their thoughts had reached some sort of impasse and had slowly shrunk in obedience to it. Yet there was a quiet intensity in their movements, a monomaniacal focus.
Charlotte turned to Nick and saw that he was also transfixed by what they were doing. With some effort, he parted his lips.
I don t know, he said. Maybe you can just say you ve changed your mind.
But we came all this way.
I think you should say you ve changed your mind, he repeated in a whisper. They re not going to force you.
Six members of the research team had accompanied them to the forest, though the leader, Sarah Clarke, was the only person Charlotte had actually corresponded with over the last month. Her own emails had been frantic and slightly scrambled, alternating between acquiescence and apprehension. Sarah was a renowned neurobiologist who had written countless articles on psychiatric disorders and new methods of rehabilitation. Her words had been precise, measured, and they were often abstruse in a way that earned Charlotte s automatic respect. Doctors had always had this effect on her. She knew she was being assessed by a mind much greater than her own, and she was vaguely excited by the idea that her thoughts - those missiles that fired without warning - would finally be defused. She longed for a quiet brain.
The forest was lucid in the early morning light, the trees fixed in positions that appeared very human. Their crooked arms seemed schooled into stillness, with muscles that twitched before the sun arrived. Charlotte had known this strange tension of arrested motion. She had been here a month earlier and she hadn t forgotten those hours.
The momentum with which the men shovelled the soil was beginning to slow. The ground was gaining heat as the sun rose higher, leering at the newly disclosed earth.
Sarah had been tapping on an iPad for a few minutes, and now she stared at Charlotte.
Are you ready?
Her voice was calm and instructive. Charlotte stared at the earth.
I think so.
Sarah approached her slowly and then lowered her voice.
Do you remember what we talked about? That you need to-
Yes, Charlotte said in a small voice.
By this point, the men had all turned away and were standing in a uniform line with their backs to Charlotte. Perhaps they hadn t intended to do so with such ceremony, but the effect was vaguely chilling.
One of the men had a large bald head, the surface of which was very uneven, almost lumpy, towards the back of the neck. His skull was shaped in a similar way to-She shuddered, refusing to entertain the thought. She would trade everything to renounce that thought - its source too, if possible.
Nick was still standing beside her and she felt reassured by his presence when she started to unbutton her blouse. She d often freely changed from one outfit to another in front of him back in her bedroom and there had been no awkwardness. Without looking ahead, she slid her trousers down, then her knickers, the elastic grazing her legs.
As she unhooked her bra, she sensed a new gravity in the atmosphere. She could detect the imminence of something malign, a force that gathered itself for sudden discharge. She couldn t attribute it to any solid presence, at least not any conscious entity.
Nick was staring at her with a questioning look. He appeared to mouth something but she couldn t make out the words.
She placed her clothes on a pile on the ground and felt it again, a reverberation that had seemed remote yet was now fully interred, having passed through her skin. Her spine began to bend and she was forced to curl her neck, as though to lean into the smallness of herself. An intimation of something vast and merciless pressed on her mind, pushing it down then letting it loose. It was like her head had been forced under water to marvel at the void below, then suddenly buoyed upwards at the last moment. In that second she could see all of her thoughts clearly like the overhanging sky.
She took Nick s hand. This was like the last time she d been here, only now there was an urgency in the way her mind was behaving.
Now you re going to lie down on the sheet, face down, Sarah said to her, and you re going to have this tube to breathe through. She picked up the transparent tube from the ground and held it carefully aloft, like a snake. I ll hand it to you when you re lying down. Okay?
Charlotte slowly moved towards the hole and crouched by it, feeling her pubic hairs bristle between her thighs. The men were still facing the opposite way, staring towards the compact darkness of the trees. She thought it looked like she was about to do something indecent, which called for their frozen postures. She crept into the shallow plot and knelt on the tarpaulin sheet at the bottom, which was tough and crackled beneath her calves.
Take your time, Charlotte, Sarah said. She was standing close. Take deep breaths first.
Maybe this is a bad idea.
That was Nick. His voice was very distant.
Charlotte? Sarah said sharply.
She was waiting for her to make a decision.
Charlotte stared at the wall of earth in front of her. An elongated worm was wriggling furiously from the cracks, shocked at the way its world had suddenly shifted. Only minutes before it had spasmed through the darkness, trusting in the mercy of what pressed it and, simultaneously, gave way.
A current of pain surged through Charlotte s back and deposited itself at the base of her spine. She lowered herself on to the sheet and lay face down, shifting her head so that one side of her face was free. The sheet was rough on her stomach and her breasts were squashed in a way that made them hard and heavy. But at this point she could still believe that she was a tenable surface, the limit beyond which the world ticked over, without intruding.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and braced herself for the first fall of earth.
Nothing came.
You need to take the breathing tube, Charlotte.
Charlotte pulled herself up, shocked that she had almost forgotten. She took the end of the tube from Sarah and lowered it towards the sheet, tugging it bluntly to test that Sarah had a firm grip on her end. She found, at this critical stage, that her trust in authority was compromised by something, that it always would be, right at the moment she needed to relinquish control. For a second, the women stared intently at each other. Charlotte yanked the tube again, which prompted a smile from Sarah, one that seemed to insinuate this lapse of faith was foolish.
When Charlotte was flat against the ground again, she inserted the tube into her mouth, taking care not to bite it. Her whole jaw was trembling. There were several heavy footfalls from on high and she felt a series of shadows blocking the sun, cooling her blood. They were all watching her. She flinched when someone leaned forward and placed a small cotton sheet over her head, tucking it in gently around her skull. She was surprised to feel a small lingering pressure beneath this person s hands before they withdrew them. There was something tender, almost mournful, in the motion that caused her eyes to burn. For a few seconds her eyelids fought to shift the material, beating rapidly against it.
We re going to distribute the earth evenly, Charlotte, so none of your joints are pressured, Sarah called to her. Your neck will be stiff in this position but, remember, - her voice grew solemn - if you want to get out of there, you have to make a sound through the tube and we ll hear it straight away. We ll not leave you longer than twenty minutes.
Nobody spoke. After a few seconds a block of earth hit Charlotte s right buttock. It smashed against her skin and took her by surprise. Her heart was pounding against the sheet. She instinctively wanted to roll on to her back, but Sarah had been very clear that she must be facing down.
More people were sending soil down now, the blocks colliding in mid-air and shattering over her skin. The pain returned, a hot prickling that started at the back of her neck and progressed to her tailbone. Though she knew she wouldn t be trapped here forever, the sensation of staring towards an infinite mass was frightening. To stare towards safety would have soothed her instincts, knowing there were only a few metres between her and the open air. But to stare into the depth that threatened her, the world itself and its endless dimension, thrilled her with the knowledge of her frailty. She could feel her body growing taut as it l