Review: You Too Could Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman

A is starting to feel like a prisoner in her home. Living with her roommate B is becoming challenging, for B seems to live only in the moments that A is home; non-existent otherwise, and slowly chiseling away at her own life until it resembles A in every regard. Smothered and unnerved, A seeks solace in her boyfriend, C, and the darkness of her bedroom, hidden by shadows yet illuminated by the flickering television, through which the world speaks to her.

When B’s assimilation of A becomes too great, A’s life slowly begins to crumble. Everyday assurances no longer comfort, and the mundane and trivial become loaded with crushing importance, yet with their meaning just out of reach. Beyond her claustrophobic world, others are also subjected to cloying strangeness. The neighbours across the street have abandoned their home, and pamphlets infiltrate the lives of all, calling for inevitability. As A loses her footing in her own world, she decides to start anew, guided by the pamphlets and an unknown yearning.

Then everything changes.

One of the most impressive aspects of the novel is its ability to truly have the reader question reality. Dream-like sequences and repetitions seem to divide the narrative into what is happening, and what is possibly not happening. Coincidences abound, and bleed from the pages into the reader’s surrounds, making Kleeman not only talented, but frankly magical.

From the surreal power of advertising and the illusion of what it means to be an individual, Kleeman not only questions everything we seem to take for granted in a busy world, but illustrates what could be happening in dark corridors behind the scenes, when people are numbers and reality no longer has a grip on society. The ability of people to be swayed can have disastrous effects if not checked in time.

You too could have a Body like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman is published by Harper Collins, and is available in South Africa from Jonathan Ball Publishers.