Body Friend

A woman convalescing from an operation considers her relationship to her body, in Australian writer Brabon’s meditative U.S. debut. The unnamed narrator, a 20-something graduate student with an unspecified autoimmune disease, has a hip replacement to help her mobility. During hydrotherapy for her recovery, she meets Frida, a woman who is coping with a similar diagnosis, and sees herself in her new friend (“It was sufficient to be a body in pain and to know that about one another”). She begins meeting daily with Frida to swim, pleased with how the water makes movement easier. During a flare-up of her condition, however, she skips swimming and goes to the park. There, she meets Sylvia, another person with chronic pain. In contrast to Frida, Sylvia seems sullen and discourages movement in favor of silent rest. Over the next weeks, the narrator moves between these two extremes, torn between Frida’s rejection of limits and her “soul-level alignment” with Sylvia. The novel’s emotional core is heated by lyrical musings on the body and its relationship to language and narrative (“Often we deny the body its story. We don’t believe it or we ignore it, because the body does not use words”). This is an illuminating reflection on what it means to live with pain. Agent: Mary Krienke, Sterling Lord Literistic. (July)