THE BODY BUILDERS

A solitary London woman navigates desire, identity, and memory as she discovers she’s the subject of a mysterious experiment in this debut novel.

Since Ada was a little girl, she’s often heard a voice speaking to her, telling her information no one else knows: how her dog died, or that her parents were getting divorced. She doesn’t know where the voice comes from, only that it seems real. One day she discovers a lump at the back of her throat, which she believes to be an implant. Despite this secret knowledge, she lives a solitary life in her apartment, spending much of her time by the pool, where she meets a stranger, Atticus, with whom she feels a mysterious connection. Then Atticus suddenly leaves for California, though Ada finds herself visited by mysterious visions of him. She continues to waft through life; she can’t shake the twin feelings of not being real herself and, at the same time, being someone else entirely. During a trip to Greece with her mother, she finds herself unexpectedly thrust into a strange facility where she can pick up a telephone and manifest anything she asks for—or, at times, unintentionally envisions—whether a perfectly wrapped Snickers bar, a potential lover, or a wild animal. “She could build a whole world,” she realizes. “She could be anybody.” Somehow this makes her feel less real than ever—until a dreamlike encounter with Atticus yields a startling epiphany, which she takes, shaken, back into the world she left. Clarke’s gift for worldbuilding and character creation is arresting from the opening pages. She manages to lead readers into a space in which time, place, and identity blur and shift like the shimmer on an oil slick without ever losing them—an admirable feat. Toward the end, though, the novel fizzles somewhat, relinquishing its magnetic hold; the characters’ final reckonings feel less like revelations than gauzy impressions, especially in contrast to the novel’s beginning, which was notable for its incisive precision.

A promising if somewhat diaphanous debut in want of a few more teeth.