The Body Farm

Description

The long-awaited new book from the critically acclaimed author of The Lightkeepers and The Wildlands: an intense and insightful collection that celebrates the horrors and joys of inhabiting our bodies

The body cannot tell any lies. From birth to death, and through all the transitions in between, the body stores our knowledge and history, our feelings and experiences. Our betrayals. These insightful and empathetic stories, from the critically acclaimed author of The Last Animal, shine new light on our physical vessels set against our physical world, two landscapes irretrievably connected and altered over time.

An entomologist solves cold cases and upholds a sense of justice by studying the decay of corpses in a field and the insect life they develop. A caregiver obsesses over a stained-glass lampshade to deal with the elegiac losses of Alzheimer’s. A sister with webbed fingers highlights the often-universal belief that our siblings just might be creatures brought forth from the deep. The memory of a scent evokes the haunting legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These eleven stories display Abby Geni’s great capacity to take us into the lives and experiences of others to scrutinize the physical self: birth, childhood, transition, mental health, trauma, aging, illness, love, sex, and death.Chicago Review of Books, A Most Anticipated Title

“There are so many reasons to put Abby Geni’s new book at the top of your 2024 most-anticipated list . . . There’s her uncanny ability to write the body in all its horrors and joys . . . The lingering hauntings of the COVID-19 pandemic echo through The Body Farm, as Geni takes readers on a journey through the physicality of our bodies and the spirits they carry.” —Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

“Destabilizing and beautiful. A rich experience.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“The stories in The Body Farm brim with empathy and imagination. The characters in this collection—from a girl who believes her older sister is a selkie, to a woman who was bitten by a tiger shark and dares to dive again, to a family of women who worry the men who cross their paths are cursed by death, to a planetary geologist who understands the movements of the solar system better than the actions of her alcoholic husband—contend with both the vulnerability and the resiliency of the human body. This book reminds readers that the best short stories have the incredible power to swiftly build absorbing worlds and to populate them with complex, engaging characters. The Body Farm is an extraordinary collection.” ––Karin Lin-Greenberg, author of You Are Here

“The beautiful, daring stories in The Body Farm are tender tales of humans attuned to the natural, physical, and imagined worlds, and Abby Geni writes so deftly, and with such wisdom, about how we negotiate our histories, flaws, and secret longings. My own world felt expanded by her keen gaze. A remarkable collection.” ––Edan Lepucki, author of Time’s MouthABBY GENI is the author of The Lightkeepers, winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction and the inaugural Chicago Review of Books Award for Best Fiction; The Wildlands, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Last Animal, an Indies Introduce Debut Authors selection and a finalist for the Orion Book Award. Geni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the Iowa Fellowship.US

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