Darinda's Reviews > The Body Lies

A pregnant woman is assaulted. Three years later, she is struggling with living in London and afraid to go out alone. For a fresh start, she takes a job teaching creative writing at a university in the remote English countryside. During her course, a male student writes disturbing stories that blur the line between fiction and reality.

The unnamed narrator is a woman who struggles with life after an assault. The assault colors her view of the world, and eventually leads her to move away from London. Her husband chooses to stay in London for his work, so they attempt to maintain a long-distance relationship, spending time together on holidays and occasional weekends. She move to the countryside with her son and starts a new job that proves to be more challenging than anticipated. The new job has a higher workload than she agreed to, and no guidance. Add in the loneliness of not having her husband around and the struggles of being the mother of a toddler, the narrator is stressed and exhausted. The character development is well done, and provides an insightful look into challenges of being a woman.

The narrator’s life is stressful enough, and when a male student writes disturbing stories, she starts to feel unsafe. The suspense builds slowly in this atmospheric novel. A good read for fans of literary crime fiction. Slow-burning, dark, and unsettling.