If the Body Allows It is a collection of loosely connected short stories revolving around a woman named Marie who struggles with both crippling guilt surrounding her father's death and an autoimmune disease. The prose is beautifully confessional and rich in imagery as we traverse each story and find connections between each of the characters and situations. The stories are all very human and relatable, attempting to make sense of addiction, guilt, illness, and failing relationships. Perhaps the one drawback of the collection is the pacing. I found myself completely engrossed by the first story and its detailing of a marriage based on lies and secret credit card debt, and I found that the remainder of the stories never reached those heights again for me. Despite this, If the Body Allows It is still an interesting meditation on pressing subjects.

**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to University of Nebraska Press**

𝘼𝙙𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙬, 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙𝙣’𝙩 𝙗𝙚 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙣𝙚.


𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘐𝘵 centers on Marie, who lost her father to a drug overdose and blames herself for ignoring his attempt at reaching out before the tragedy. When she meets Peter, who has just as much guilt over the senseless death of his best friend, the two form a strange bond over their wounds, oozing with regrets. In 𝘚𝘬𝘪𝘯, Marie must make difficult choices in order to use a new infusion drug to help ‘improve her quality of life’, because anyone with an autoimmune disease knows there is no cure. The heart has its needs but the body’s demands must always be met first. Hoping to have a life with the body declaring mutiny is just another mountain she has to climb. Where is the hope when doctors are stumped, when everything is left to chance? How do you frame a life, let alone relationships, and heal from loss when your failing body is the biggest mystery of all?

Other stories are about the strange twists of fate, longings, unrequited love, loneliness, wayward children, strained marriages, and the shock of losing the good things you once had. In 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵, a married woman is stunned to learn a boy she knew twenty years ago became a famous singer and decides to see his show. She will use his old pet-name “Beast” as a means to spark his memory of their prom night together and maybe escape her boring life.

𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴– Karen wants more for her daughters than a life working behind a counter, but if she can’t even domesticate the many stray cats that her daughter Venus first began rescuing, how can she get Venus to change? Worse, her second husband Warren bucks against the very idea of Venus moving in with them again, not with all her “troubles”. Her younger daughter Maille may call Warren dad and be in better control of her life than her flailing sister Venus, but she makes Karen feel inept. The missing piece, the girls father Charlie, has been dead for seventeen years and Karen can’t help comparing Warren to him (in her mind anyway). How can a mother ever express to a man like Warren why she is welded to her adult children and their needs, why she is gutted by the ideal of Venus’s “expiring potential”?

𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘴– When a divorcee runs into her first love at a party she strikes up a conversation, against all reason. As the two fill in the gaps of their missing years, she ignores the wounds of their past and worse, the festering infection, her own troubled brother Duck. The old tenderness between them may still be alive but a blizzard is about to change that. It is a story about our perceptions of events and the measure of forgiveness. What is the weight of victim-hood? Sharp edges of memories remain despite the passage of years and everything left unspoken is souring by the minute.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘞𝘢𝘴 𝘔𝘦 𝘖𝘯𝘤𝘦- Jordan is settled into a ready made family, feeling as though every opportunity ever presented to him has vanished into thin air. When he isn’t following his ex-wife Dani on the internet, a young bride at the time they married and unable to stick with him, he is wasting his life working as a cashier and dealing with the tension between he and his current partner Mara. Mara, who is forever in his corner and loyal to the end. With Dani back on the scene he has a chance to ‘rewrite his life’ but is the plunge worth the risk?

𝘍𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘉𝘢𝘣𝘺– In the wake of her father’s serious crime, high school student Reggie may as well be one of the damned. She needs distraction from the shame the sins of her father has generated and finds it in classmate Matt. With the “flour baby project” at school, she has a chance to bring up her abysmal grade but ruin seems to be chasing her. This is an interesting story- people support the victim’s family (as they should) but never consider the innocent bystanders within the family of the perpetrator. It’s a sensitive subject and provocative.

𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘺– Elizabeth feels her best friend Greta is growing out of her reach and on the verge leaving her behind. More often on the brutal end of Greta’s mean deliveries and criticisms, Elizabeth feels threatened already when Ian, an older neighbor, takes up too much space between them. What can she do with all the emptiness and pain but fill it with an act of her own betrayal?

Each story is about how we carry the grief fate deals us and try to define ourselves through the trials of the heart, mind, soul and body. It can be a brutal experience and we don’t always win. The writing is rich and I commiserate with the illness Marie faces as it’s close to home. Being alive is messy, sometimes it’s our own doing and sometimes it’s just the mean turn of fate.

Publication Date: September 1, 2020

University of Nebraska Press

A deeply moving book that lingers long within your heart. It's a book to savor so take your time with this gem of a book. The stories weave one within the other engaging your senses. Not to be missed. Happy reading!

Just a wonderful a read. The world building and story telling was expertly done. I felt immersed in the story.