Praise for Body Friend

 ‘Body Friend shows that pain can be a friend and a friend can be a mirror, but what they reflect is more than just a mirror image, and contains many possibilities.’ — Sydney Morning Herald

‘an illuminating reflection on what it means to live with pain.’ –Publishers Weekly

‘Body Friend is a deeply intimate tribute to the fragile and porous self, written in prose of rare clarity and tenderness. I felt everything reading this book.’— Claire Thomas, author of The Performance and Fugitive Blue

‘Body Friend is tender and expressive. Brabon’s writing is exquisitely constructed. Her prose holds quiet emotional weight – putting the reader in mind, particularly, of Elena Ferrante’s style – which is extraordinarily effective in capturing the lived realities of the body. Body Friend is a novel that clings to the mind long after it finishes.’ —ArtsHUB

‘Its language is startling for its poetic tendencies – it is rhythmic and observant, and liltingly musical – as well as its clarity and sharp concision. Brabon’s prose is one of the deepest pleasures of the novel.’ — The Saturday Paper

 ‘a tender and raw novel about friendship, chronic pain and the healing power of water.’ — Harper's Bazaar

‘The plot unfolds artfully and with precision to surprise and exceed readers’ expectations.’— Books + Publishing

‘A compelling and deeply insightful reckoning with illness, intimacy, estrangement and control, Body Friend is a novel of rare grace. Through the stories of three women whose experiences are both singular and uncannily intertwined, Katherine Brabon illuminates the way chronic pain disrupts familiar narratives about the self and the body, questioning how we might better care for ourselves and each other in all our tender vulnerability. Her sentences are a tonic, offering the clarity and exquisite pleasure of swimming in calm, cool water.’ — Madelaine Lucas, author of Thirst for Salt

‘Body Friend is a kind of ghost story by stealth, an account of devotion, obsession and chronic pain that reveals a netherworld inside this one. It is told with such delicacy, with such a tender and insistent voice, that it becomes—uncannily, thrillingly—luminous.’—Miles Allinson, author of Fever of Animals and In Moonland

‘Brabon writes some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read, and this book is both muted and raw, like pain itself. A love letter to a body, to relationship and connection, and to water, Brabon explores what we need and how we need it with astonishing wisdom and candour.’—Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Cherry Beach and Little Plum

—Oliver Mol, author of Train Lord and Lion Attack! 

‘Katherine Brabon’s Body Friend is a tender ode to the recursive mysteries of the body and the need to find ourselves in other people. The narrator’s pull between Frida and Sylvia, between effort and surrender, haunted and compelled me. This books speaks to you with a delicate, iron grace, endlessly returning.’  –Alyssa Songsiridej, author of Little Rabbit
 

‘At once a feverish investigation of the body's limits and a hypnotic account of city walks, swimming, and friendship. I loved the intimacy of these pages.’ –Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists and White on White

 
‘Never before have I read a book with such a compelling investigation of illness and pain, recovery and rest. Brabon writes with unwavering insight and intelligence; Body Friend inspires me to better understand my own friendships, my own life in a body. I tore through it. I will be thinking about this book for a long, long time.’ –Anna Hogeland, author of The Long Answer
 

‘An examination of a life in pain that isn’t at all painful to read. Fearless and clear-eyed. This book is a gift.’ —Karen Havelin, author of Please Read This Leaflet Carefully
 

‘An utterly absorbing, entirely one-of-a-kind novel, Body Friend is an acutely observed exploration of chronic pain, revealing an uncommon richness and resonance behind experiences that so often feel dull and deadening. Beyond that, it’s an insightful and fresh meditation on the dualities we all negotiate between mind and body, control and submission, devotion and guilt, hope and despair. The writing—insistent, rhythmic, immersive, sure—is a masterful marriage of content to form: writer as lap-swimmer circling the pool. Reading it feels like a plunge into cool water, both bracing and relieving, as intimately familiar as it’s surprising. The gift of this book will stay with me for a long time.’ –Helena de Bres, author of How to Be Multiple

Praise for The Memory Artist

‘a thoughtful, tender novel of a people damaged beyond expression.’ - The Saturday Paper

‘the universality of the book is deeply affecting.’ - Sydney Morning Herald

Praise for The Shut Ins

‘a particularly rewarding piece of fiction.’ - The Age/Sydney Morning Herald

‘a melancholy yet compelling story about isolation, duty, desire, fear and escape.’ - Books + Publishing