Released 31st May, 2023 // 52 pages // 978-1-915760-15-9 // RRP £8.99
In Your Body is a House Stripped Charley Barnes delivers a poignant and raw narrative of battling with an eating disorder. Written in the second person, this novella takes readers on a journey through a precise and honest depiction of the toll an eating disorder takes on both the mind and the body, shedding light on a subject that is too often left in the dark. Your Body is a House Stripped is a brave and powerful work that will resonate with readers who have struggled with similar issues, and provide insight for those who seek to understand.
PRAISE for Your Body is a House Stripped:
A powerful and courageously honest novella which ought to be required reading for pretty much anyone with a soul. Through a beautifully consistent form – a set of architectural thought experiments and crystalline memoir – Your Body is a House Stripped is emotionally and intellectually generous enough to let the reader in to a territory too often left off the map. It’s a remarkable literary work which I can also foresee being of great consolation and help to many.
— Luke Kennard, Notes on the Sonnets
Charley Barnes takes us into the disorder caused by an eating disorder, precisely delineating the pretending, the strategies for avoidance, the leaving of figurative breadcrumbs to throw concerned loved ones off the scent. What startles is the poetry that is to be found in this account of decline and, thankfully, recovery: ribs become a tally chart of days; kcals a proxy measure of guilt. At one point, we are asked: why would anyone lie about eating one biscuit? In providing us with an answer to this and many questions like it, Barnes makes us as readers hold our breath.
— Rishi Dastidar, Neptune’s Projects
ABOUT Charley Barnes:
Charley Barnes is a Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing. She specialises in crime fiction, and has authored several novels in this genre, too, though her preferred style is psychological thrillers. Now, Charley is writing her first academic monograph, forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan, while also working on her twelfth novel. She continues to collaborate with other poets, namely Claire Walker and Wendy Allen, and she is readying her second full manuscript of poetry to step out into the world.
