"Garden of Earthly Bodies ripples with visceral language that conceals an ominous underbelly, ever threatening to burst free. . . . Oliver's prose is quite captivating. She writes with a poetic precision, deftly balancing sections with words charged with sexual and fatalistic tension in equal parts."
--Chicago Review of Books
"A visceral vortex of blood and trauma [with] a uniquely elegant literary style . . . every bit horrific as it is intelligent . . . Fans of gothic, classic literary horror, this one is for you."--Cemetery Dance Magazine
"A deep and complex exploration of life and trauma"--Strange Horizons Magazine
"A beautifully written and intensely felt novel. Its subject matter--grief and mortality--is timeless, but its method, a startling combination of emotional realism and gothic horror, feels brand-new."--Ian McGuire, author of The North Water and The Abstainer
"Intelligent, addictive, and disturbing. Sally Oliver is a thoughtful, gorgeous writer, and this layered exploration of trauma, family, and selfhood will linger."
--Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House and What Should Be Wild
"An affecting portrait of a young life shaped by grief, set against an unnerving, surreal medical backdrop, somewhere between My Year of Rest and Relaxation and A Cure for Wellness. . . . A remarkable, thought-provoking, vivid book."
--Will Wiles, author of The Way Inn and Plume
"It's hard to believe Garden of Earthly Bodies is a debut novel because the writing and pacing are so confident and assured. Compulsive and deeply unsettling. Don't start it if you have stuff to do!"--Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
"Daring, unsettling, and original, Garden of Earthly Bodies is a debut to savor. Sally Oliver writes with startling intensity."
--Victoria Gosling, author of Before the Ruins
"I love Sally's writing. . . . The plot of Garden of Earthly Bodies was wonderfully intriguing, but it was the emotion in the story and the quality of the writing that sang out to me."
--Helen Fisher, author of Faye, Faraway
"Sally Oliver has created a deeply unsettling story, told at a brilliantly controlled pace and rendered in luminous prose. It's like the love child of early Ian McEwan and Nicola Barker."
--Ali Millar, author of The Last Days