College teachers -- Fiction. |
Authors -- Fiction. |
Women -- Crimes against -- Fiction. |
Psychological fiction. |
Thrillers (Fiction) |
Academicians |
Academics (Persons) |
College instructors |
College lecturers |
College professors |
College science teachers |
Lectors (Higher education) |
Lecturers, College |
Lecturers, University |
Professors |
Universities and colleges -- Teachers |
University academics |
University instructors |
University lecturers |
University professors |
University teachers |
Writers |
Crimes against women |
Femicide |
Women victims of crime |
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Summary
Summary
A dark, thrilling new novel from the best-selling author of Longbourn: a work of riveting psychological suspense that grapples with how to live as a woman in the world--or in the pages of a book--when the stakes are dangerously high.
When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote English countryside, it's meant to be a fresh start, away from the bustle of London and the scene of a violent assault she is desperate to forget. But despite the distractions of her new life and the demands of single motherhood, her nerves continue to jangle. To make matters worse, a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative-writing class. When a troubled student starts turning in chapters that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognizes herself as the main character in his book--and he has written her a horrific fate. Will she be able to stop life imitating art before it's too late? At once a breathless cat-and-mouse game and a layered interrogation of the fetishization of the female body, The Body Lies gives us an essential story for our time that will have you checking the locks on your doors.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Still traumatized three years after being assaulted during her pregnancy near her South London home, the unnamed novelist who narrates this lyrical suspense novel from Baker (Longbourn) leaps at the offer of a university lectureship in rural Lancashire, even though it means she and her toddler son will be separated from her husband, who can't leave his teaching job in London. The move will indeed change everything-but hardly the way she hopes. For starters, their rose-covered rented house redefines remote. And then there are the unanticipated challenges presented by her creative writing students-in particular, the most talented but also most troubling one, Nicholas Palmer, whose seemingly autobiographical work in progress centers on a young woman who dies under mysterious circumstances. Though Nicholas starts pushing for an inappropriate personal relationship with the narrator, his writing skill makes her loathe to establish firm boundaries-a decision that backfires catastrophically after a Christmas party. Soon she's fighting to save her job, her marriage, and even her life. All too plausible, Baker's powerful tale is at times heart-rending to read-and impossible to put down. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Baker's first novel since A Country Road, a Tree (2016) revolves around the terrifying experience of a professor caught up in a student's dangerous obsession. Three years after a harrowing assault in London leaves the unnamed narrator traumatized, she accepts a position teaching writing at a university deep in the English countryside. Her husband decides to keep his city job and commute to see her and their young son on weekends. At first, she's entranced with the small town, the large house she's renting, and her charming, welcoming colleagues. Her six graduate students appear to be talented and unique, but she can't help but be unsettled by the attention paid her by one of them, Nicholas, a seemingly deeply sensitive young man writing a novel about his dead girlfriend. When their relationship takes a dark turn after a party, the narrator finds herself caught up in a nightmare that threatens her sense of safety, her career, and even her life. With an unflinching eye, Baker deftly explores the pressure, judgment, and dangers women are subjected to on a daily basis simply because they are female. Her brilliant novel is a scathing indictment of the many ways society excoriates women while excusing violent men. A must read.--Kristine Huntley Copyright 2019 Booklist
Guardian Review
Campus novel satire and the high drama of a thriller combine in a fiendishly readable interrogation of the allure of violent fiction Jo Baker's recent books have been metafictions: Longbourn , the story of the servants who are barely mentioned in Pride and Prejudice ; and A Country Road, a Tree , following Samuel Beckett's life in wartime France. Both are brave and clever novels finding new worlds in the shadows of the literary canon. The Body Lies has no obvious specific intertext, but it sits in uneasy, challenging relation to contemporary popular fiction. We begin, conventionally enough, with an invitation to take aesthetic pleasure in the death of a pretty young woman, lying dusted by snow under a beech tree on a moonlit night. Then we turn the page to meet the unnamed narrator, who is heavily pregnant, being assaulted by a strange man outside her London flat. Afterwards, the baby is OK, she says, so she's OK, and though the midwife doesn't believe her, her partner thinks she should "let it go" and move on. And then, 10 pages in, we skip three years and begin again - disturbed, waiting for some explanation - as the narrator starts a new job teaching creative writing in a northern university and caring for her toddler while her partner continues his school-teaching career in London. There is some good campus satire: since one of the writing professors is on research leave and the other off sick with stress, our heroine finds that she is the creative writing department. She must teach students who have requested accommodation for special circumstances while declining to share the nature of the circumstances to be accommodated. She is required to attend induction sessions delivered at the end of the year's teaching, to carry chairs from one decrepit room to another for meetings and to work all night in a hopeless gesture towards increasingly bizarre bureaucratic demands. Meanwhile, back at the remote rural cottage where the narrator and her son are living, three-year-old Sam sees a man watching them in the dusk and the neighbours warn her to get a dog. There is no phone reception. A grieving and confused old woman wanders the lanes and the farmer at the end of the road is hostile: something is wrong, but neither we nor she know what. Now that so many writers teach in universities, it's not surprising to see the writing workshop observed in fiction As writers become - to quote a former university colleague of mine - "the grey squirrels of English departments", it's not surprising that the distinctive dynamics of the writing workshop should find their way into fiction. Baker's version is more direct and plot-driven than Rachel Cusk's in Outline , but both are interested in the drama of fictions and egos performed in weekly ritual. Baker's students include a lawyer writing generic misogynist crime fiction, possibly related to that dead body, with disturbing relish; a young woman mining her own not very interesting past; and a troubled posh boy upsetting everyone by writing rather brilliantly about the workshop. Presenting these pieces in the novel is a loop of metafiction that would floor a less assured writer. The students are all competitive, worried that their tutor is underqualified, that her judgment is unreliable, that she is too old or too young, too posh or too poor, too sexy or not sexy enough, to understand them as deeply as they have paid to be understood. The dynamics of self-revelation, attention-seeking and self-righteousness swirl dangerously, with attractions and repulsions from outside the classroom seeping into the students' writing and reading of each other's work. Several of the male characters think a lot about sexual violence but are also obvious fabulists, so who knows what is true, what is self-delusion, what is said to impress and what is legitimately fictional? Every so often the narrative revisits that dead body, which may be rather close to the narrator's house. When the denouement comes, it is well timed to feel both shocking and inevitable: early enough for satisfying resolution afterwards and late enough to keep the reader up long into the night. There is violence, but there is also a very modern interrogation of violent fiction. What were you staying up late for, exactly? The Body Lies sets itself large challenges: that fragmentary narrative, including an official complaint and some bureaucratic emails; the difficulty of using violence as a narrative device while questioning the politics of using violence as a narrative device; the task of combining the satire of the campus novel with the high drama of the thriller. Baker is a writer who can make it all work. Beyond the dubious fun of the chase, the pleasure of reading this novel is seeing writerly ambition fulfilled.
Kirkus Review
Psychologically as well as physically bruised by a random attack on a city street, a young woman moves to the country with her child only to find that she has not put as much distance between herself and danger as she thought.Haunted by repetitive images of a dying girl in a wood, Baker's (A Country Road, a Tree, 2016, etc.) new novel is a story of female response to male threat, boosted by questions of literary expression. The unnamed heroine, author of a successful first novel and living in London with her teacher husband, is assaulted by a stranger as the story opens. Later, partially healed, she moves north with her 3-year-old son to a university town to take up a lectureship in creative writing. The move is stressful in multiple ways, as the woman juggles domestic responsibilities, struggles to keep her marriage together, and tries, as a novice teacher, to handle her students. The students' written work peppers the tale, notably chapters by Nicholas Palmer, a gifted but complicated young man from a wealthy local family, whose autobiographical fiction includes references to the tragic death of a young girl. The woman begins to sense warning signals yet doesn't take the necessary steps, a factor common to thrillers but also part of Baker's commentary on the difficulties for women of dealing with encroaching peril. Nevertheless, this conventional setup is at odds with Baker's previous, often outstanding body of work, which is marked by more original portraits of women's lives and stances. Here, for all the central character's identifiable dilemmas and the interesting perspective of the "other" literary voices, the story devolves into single-strand plot stereotype, with a psychopath battering down the door and a terrorized woman fleeing for her safety.Baker's fans will enjoy the crisp descriptive writing and insightful nuances but might find this a limited, relatively predictable showcase for her abilities. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A pregnant young woman falls victim to a quick and brutal assault in London, which eventually leads her to take a job in a more rural area. Her husband stays in the city while she and their three-year-old son move to the countryside, where she teaches creative writing. She is apprehensive and uncertain, as she has had only one book published and feels unqualified and underprepared for the job. Her students are a close-knit group that take to their new instructor, including her in party invites and asking about her son. However, a few of them turn in dark, violent chapters that go beyond fiction and into reality-particularly her reality. VERDICT Longbourn author Baker's foray into suspense contains some beautifully written passages, but it is mostly told from the perspective of the protagonist, and at times it's hard to grasp the young woman's motivations or emotions. Regardless, this book is recommended for readers who enjoy psychological thrillers that focus on women protagonists such as Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, or Paula Hawkins's Girl on the Train. [See Prepub Alert, 12/6/18.]-Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.