I’m curious if there are any good novels out there that explore the weirdness of embodiment. I have a tenuous relationship with my own body – spent much of my life feeling very disconnected from it and even disgusted by the “messiness” of physicality, I still deal with intrusive thoughts around how fragile our bodies are, etc. I’m finally learning the embrace the fact that I AM a body, not just a mind inhabiting one, and to enjoy the good things about being a body… I have no idea if that makes sense. But I’d love to know if there’s some character in some book out there who has experienced something similar, whose story I could read. Thanks in advance!
by ohthehummanity
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Turtles all the way down by John green-staring Aza, who deals with debilitating OCD focused on this topic
The children of time series and alien clay and frankly a lot of work by Adrian Tchaikovsky have elements of this but it’s sci fi and the bodies in question are not human. It sounds like what you’re looking for would fall into the realm of transgender themed literature?
There are themes about this in “Turtles All The Way Down” by John Green but more in a negative sense because the main character has OCD. John Green also has OCD and I felt it was impactful in its portrayal. I’m not sure if it would be a good experience or not bit it, but it might be relatable
A very strange book, but The Secret Service by Wendy Walker if you can find it
This prompt made me think of Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun, both by Kashuro Igugaro (sp?)
Looks like I’ll be the one to mention Becky Chambers here. Particularly the second book in the Wayfarers series, but I think all her books touch on embodiment.
The Host by Stephanie Meyer could be an interesting choice. Human body and some human consciousness, but also extraterrestrial consciousness at the same time.
This might be a stretch, but if you’re open to science fiction the character of Mark in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series might interest you. Mark was cloned from the series’ main character as part of a convoluted assassination/coup plot, but then he meets his clone twin and things go sideways. His narrative arc spans several books – Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance primarily, and then it’s largely brought to a resolution in A Civil Campaign, but Mirror Dance is the one that really digs into what you’re looking for. (The whole series is excellent, though.)
Altered Carbon
Try some Clarice Lispector I recommend starting with The Passion According to GH
Body’s A Bad Monster by Rowan Perez comes to mind but I’m not sure if it has a larger focus on other themes than the dysmorphia as been a while since i read it and it was a bit of a trip
Blood music. By Greg Bear
Beautyland by Marie-Helen Bartino! one of my favorite reads this year. main character is an alien born into a human body to study humanity. she explores what it means to be a corporeal being in society. it’s also a good description of autism imo
Jeff Vandermeers Southern Reach novels deal with this, I wouldn’t want to say much to avoid spoiling anything though.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor.
It’s very queer and largely about gender identity. It may not be what you’re looking for but it’s the book that came to my mind. I’d call it magical realism.
cool topic! i’ve been thinking a lot about how western society & language separate the mind & the body! i don’t have any immediate recs, but exploring this through the lens of sports could be insightful – a good game of hockey brings it together for me like little else.
*Monstrilio* by Gerardo Sámano Cordova has some elements of this, particularly with one of the narrators.
Have you read the argonauts by Maggie Nelson?
I who have never known men could appeal to you
This makes me think of All Fours, by Miranda July. It is sexual in nature, and opinions are pretty divided on it, so probably read a review or two to decide if it’s something you’re interested in first!
*Every Day* by David Levithan. The main character wakes up every day in a different person’s body. It’s a strange concept but it really works.
I think you’d like Ancillary Justice! A mini spoiler ahead but not too much: >!It’s about an artificial intelligence who used to be a space ship plus thousands of ancillary ‘bodies’, cut off and trapped as just one foot soldier. The ancillary has to learn to adjust to being a single entity in one single body which I think fits the bill of what you’re after quite well 🙂 !<
If you ever write something that features this topic, let us know.
Johnny got his gun
*The Collector Collector* by Tibor Fischer. The narrator is a 5,000 year-old Sumerian bowl. Definitely the best talking bowl novel I’ve ever read ;-).
Iain M. Banks’s Culture series and some of his other novels explore the motif of embodiment. The Culture series takes place in a civilization where humans can modify their physical form in just about any way, virtual environments are highly sophisticated, and super powerful (and mostly benevolent) AI “minds” live cooperatively with people and can take forms from large ships and habitats, to self-contained roughly suitcase-sized units called “drones” that are roughly equivalent to an individual person, to humanoid avatars. A Culture novel where this motif is particularly prominent is *Surface Detail*, although it is present to a degree in the whole series. BTW, it’s only a series because the books take place in the Culture civilization. But they take place at different times, in different places, and with different casts of characters, so they are really independent and can be read in any order.
Among his non-Culture novels, *Transition* takes place in a multiverse where certain individuals can “flit” among the bodies of other people in different parallel worlds.
The protagonist of *The Algebraist* is a kind of interspecies ethnographer who spends most of the book living among a mysterious, weirdly eccentric, and tremendously long-lived species called “dwellers,” who live throughout the universe inside gas giant planets. He spends most of the novel encased in a “gascraft” with his body pumped full of special gel, so he can survive in the dwellers’ environment and interact with them.
Perhaps a way to explore the body as a vessel of life? Stiff by Mary Roach
A lot of the stories in the collection *Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel* by Julian K. Jarboe fit this theme.
You might also like the song “My Body’s My Buddy” by Brye and Tessa Violet, there are gendered and gender neutral versions.
She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb
An older book sort of “self-help” called Bodymind. It really opened my eyes to the dichotomy of how we think of our mind vs our body and how to better integrate our through to encompassing both as a whole.