Author(s): Jennifer Down

Aust Fiction

MILES FRANKLIN AWARD WINNER 2022 Jennifer Down cements her status as a leading light of Australian literary fiction in this heart-rending and intimate saga of one woman's turbulent life So by the grace of a photograph that had inexplicably gone viral, Tony had found me. Or- he'd found Maggie.I had no way of knowing whether he was nuts or not; whether he might go to the cops. Maybe that sounds paranoid, but I don't think it's so ridiculous. People have gone to prison for much lesser things than accusations of child-killing. A quiet, small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she's reluctant to revisit- dark memories and unspoken trauma, bruised thighs and warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss. She became a new person a long time ago. What happens when buried stories are dragged into the light? This epic novel from the two-time Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year is a masterwork of tragedy and heartbreak-the story of a life in full. Sublimely wrought in devastating detail, Bodies of Light confirms Jennifer Down as one of the writers defining her generation.

Matilda Bookshop Review

This is an absolute staggering, heart in your mouth read. While often brutal--the main character, Maggie, is confronting the trauma wrought from being a ward of the state for all of her childhood--the writing is shot through with light. I don't think I've read anything that so viscerally writes the body on the page. Calling into question notions of identity, invisibility, sexuality, trauma and belonging, Maggie's relationship with her own body and the bodies of others is devastating and sublime. I could not put this down. Molly