Our Monstrous Bodies

'Glitters with menace' LUCY ROSE

'Visceral and affecting' EMMA VAN STRAATEN

‘Hypnotic and deeply unsettling… both tender and terrifying’ CELIA SILVANI

'Utterly unique, experimental and, simultaneously, a page-turner with the sly, creeping pace of a horror film' HEATHER O'NEILL

My eyes snapped open and I saw something else in the mirror, something else that wasn’t me…

In the wake of an ill-omened romance with a horror cinephile, Brooke arrives in Vancouver to care for her sister, Izzy, who is facing reproductive surgery. But Izzy’s rapidly decaying apartment building, its hallways stalked by an ominous crone known only as Medusa, offers little refuge to the sisters.

Seeking solace in the films her ex-girlfriend loved, Brooke soon finds traces of horror bleeding from the screen into her life. Old wounds reopen and new frictions surface, and when Brooke begins to exhibit strange symptoms of her own, Izzy’s concern spirals into obsession. The line between self and sister blurs until only one question remains: who, or what, will survive when all unravels?

Through the dual lenses of art and horror cinema, Emma Cleary brilliantly dissects loneliness, motherhood and the body’s threatened autonomy. Eerie and threaded with yearning, Our Monstrous Bodies is a haunting literary debut that blooms with the dark desires we suppress or to which we surrender.