The Body of the Beasts

Disturbing and sensuous, Audrée Wilhelmy's tale of a hermetic family minding a lighthouse in willed isolation is reminiscent of William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

The Body of Beasts is a startling, gorgeously written novel that tells the story of the Borya family living in isolation. Their lives are altered when young Osip, peering from the lighthouse gallery sees a woman, Noé, arrive -- her dress scant, her skin curiously scarred, and her manner mysterious and wild.

Noé bears a child, Mie, to the eldest son on whose hunter-gathering the Borya family depends. She lives in a cabin on her own and covers the walls with drawings that allude to her mysterious life. The family's entrenchment in nature is enthrallingly conveyed in young Mie's sensuous ability to borrow at will the body of mammals, birds, fish, and insects. Her shape-shifting allows her to know the ways of the natural world, though only to a point. When her own awakening body starts to intrigue her, she asks her uncle Osip to "teach me human sex."

The Body of the Beasts is an imaginative tour de force, a beautifully described portrait of a world that exists outside of words; an uninhibited and erotic novel that, in the singular tradition of Québécois Boreal Gothic, explores our humanity -- and animal nature.

Author: Audrée Wilhelmy
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Arachnide Editions
Published: 07/30/2019
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.5lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781487006105

About the Author
Ouriou, Susan: -

SUSAN OURIOU is considered to be one of Québec's finest translators of literary fiction. With Christine Morelli, she has previously translated Fanny Britt's acclaimed novel Hunting Houses for Arachnide.

Wilhelmy, Audrée: -

AUDRÉE WILHELMY was born in 1985 in Cap Rouge, Quebec and now lives in Montreal. She is the winner of France's Sade Award, has been a finalist for the Governor-General's Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Prix France-Québec and the Quebec Booksellers Award. The Body of the Beasts is her third novel and the first to be translated into English.