Lead Review

• Book: Body Kintsugi
• Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Author: Celia Hawkesworth (translator), Senka Marić

Review Author: Tina Hartas

Sometimes it is nice to sit down and finish a short novel in just a couple of hours. Peirene Press specialise in short reads by non-english speaking authors and chooses eclectic titles to build their catalogue.

This is set in Bosnia, there is little on location but there is a good, literary writing style, which is beautifully translated.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of making visible repairs, in chinaware, for example, with liquid gold and platinum and consciously incorporating the filled fissures into the original piece. Body Kintsugi is not a story of ceramics but the ripple effect of a cancer diagnosis on one woman who has no name. The scars on a body, both physical and emotional, are central.

As the novel opens, the protagonist’s husband, and father of their children is leaving, and shortly thereafter she finds a lump in her breast. Her doctor admits her to hospital for radical surgery, the first of many procedures, and this is the story her journey, the effects on all levels, the medication, the pain and her reflections. Her body is changing but she is still the same person within. How does she find succour at this difficult time, how does she come terms with the loss of body parts, parts that are integral to her womanhood?

It feels quite a personal – and at times harrowing – narrative, told in second person singular. It has a good fluidity of style and ruminative prose. It is a poignant but ultimately depressing read as we are confronted with raw trauma. So, caution is recommended, this novel is not for everyone.

There is a really poignant quote from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, cited as the book opens, and that is a good place to end: But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh.  Pain marks you,  but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

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