Book name- ODDBODY
Author- Rose Keating
Published by- Simon & Schuster
Price- $17.99
Oddbody, the debut short-story collection from the Irish author, Rose Keating, is a daring plunge into feminist body-horror: ten sharply wrought stories that make magnificent use of grotesque bodily imagery to explore topics such as depression, body dysmorphia, grief and desire. Each story probes the uneasy space between the social world and our own flesh, with characters whose bizarre transformations reveal both visceral terror and painful truths.
In the titular story, “Oddbody”, the narrator navigates life tethered to a ghost. This spectre relentlessly mocks her body (“Look at the bulging waves of cellulite rippling across the inner thighs”), encouraging self-destruction and even suicide. Yet its presence feels familiar and, therefore, almost comforting, amidst the narrator’s otherwise crippling loneliness. What might have been limited to the genre of horror thus becomes a brilliant metaphor for navigating shame and visibility in a female body. The formless ghost, unburdened by pain, becomes an aspirational figure even as the body and its natural processes become shrouded in disgust.
Keating’s deadpan expressionism continues in “Bela Lugosi Isn’t Dead”, where a 14‑year‑old girl, Saoirse, shares her bedroom with the ghostly Dracula actor, Bela Lugosi. Although he is treated matter-of-factly by Saoirse’s mother and becomes a confidant for the girl, he is also part fantasy, a surreal vessel of grief and adolescence. There’s dark humour here, but also a tenderness that undercuts the gothic.
One of the most viscerally grotesque tales, “Squirm”, features Laura caring for her father, who has partially morphed into a giant, segmented worm living in a soil-filled bath. His condition is bizarre yet ordinary. Here, Keating uses absurd metamorphosis to examine dependency, familial obligation, and the limits of empathy.
Other standout stories include “Pineapple”, in which a woman in an unfulfilling relationship voluntarily undergoes a series of strange surgical procedures, such as having a pair of giant wings sewn on to her shoulder blades to feel a sense of excitement; and “Next to Cleanliness”, where a chilling visit to a wellness “cleanse” strips Catherine down literally to her skeleton, satiating the patriarchal gaze while erasing her autonomy. In “Eggshells”, a waitress lays a literal egg mid-shift, forcing the reader to ponder bodily shame in a public setting and the social rules that define normalcy.
At times, the single conceptual thread — the combined thrill, pleasure, disgust and fear, evoked by the human body — fails to sustain the narratives, and the repeated disturbing imagery feels almost numbing. It is thus a good idea to pace the book in small doses to fully absorb the emotional impact of each story. One of the most enjoyable features of this bravely experimental collection of short stories is a deliberately restrained humorous tone that enhances the bizarre by masking it in a veneer of normalcy.