Body Friend is a lyrical and nuanced exploration of a young woman’s rehabilitation following surgery for an unnamed chronic disease. While the physical aspects of her recuperation are the focus of the narrative, it’s her inner journey that’s integral.
Fluidity of style is echoed in the principal theme of the book – the relationship between the body and the self. Constantly in flux, one forever competing for mastery of the other, this volatility is symbolised in two close friendships the protagonist forms during the months following her hospitalisation. She first meets Frida in the hydrotherapy pool where she’s assigned to take remedial classes. Increasingly drawn to Frida’s apparent determination to conquer the weaknesses of the body through swimming, she becomes obsessed by trying to match her ability as they visit various pools in the months after therapy.
Sylvia, the other woman with whom she forms a friendship, urges her to take a different approach. Rest and surrender, she believes, are the ways to gain peace of body and mind. As both relationships become increasingly significant to the protagonist and her dependency on both women escalates, her sense of self becomes fragmented. Trying to negotiate the mind/body nexus effectively for herself drives the final part of the book. Her realisation that ‘with others, we become alternative versions of ourselves’, is an indication that her capacity to be self-determining is improving.
My one reservation about this book is that the subtleties of style and narration make the protagonist somewhat of a remote figure. As a reader I felt little empathy for any of the characters, although I am in awe of the polished prose.
Reviewed by Anne Green
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORKatherine Brabon’s first novel, The Memory Artist, won The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award in 2016. It was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and longlisted in the Indie Book Awards. Her second novel, The Shut Ins, won the People’s Choice Award at the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in 2022. It was shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, and longlisted for the Voss Prize and the ALS Gold Medal.
Katherine was joint winner of the 2019 David Harold Tribe Fiction Award from the University of Sydney, runner up in the 2020 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize and longlisted in the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize.
Her work has appeared in Vogue, Australian Book Review, The Australian Financial Review, The Saturday Paper, Island, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, and she is a regular contributor to Melbourne’s Lindsay magazine. She has been a resident at Château de Lavigny Switzerland, Art Omi New York, the UNESCO Cities of Literature International Residency in Ljubljana, and received the Varuna Writer’s House Eleanor Dark Fellowship.
Her third novel Body Friend will be published by Ultimo Press in 2023.
Katherine lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.
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