The Body of the Beasts

The Body of the Beasts is a visceral story with wings: rhythmically beating, it both suffocates readers and prepares us to soar.

World Literature Today

The Body of the Beasts is daring and darkly erotic, as emotionally and morally elusive as the characters who roam within it … Wilhelmy’s language is tight yet immersive; there is an underlying melancholy to it, like being alone in a forest with nothing but the sound of rustling leaves. It is rare and delightful to find a novel where language and character move so seamlessly together, hand in hand … A piece of this book will linger. Literary Review of Canada

Sensual and strange. Booklist

[Wilhelmy] is a meticulous recorder of the dramatic wilderness … Lovely writing. Kirkus Reviews

Masterful … Finding beauty in unexpected places, be they natural settings or seldom-explored corners of human behaviour, is something Wilhelmy does as well as any young writer in any language. Montreal Gazette

With a miniaturist’s touch, Audrée Wilhelmy creates a singular universe suffused with sap and silence, at once lush to the limit, smothering and amoral … A tour de force of audacity and sensuality achieved unhesitatingly in full-bodied writing that is precise and without misstep. A brilliant novel that explores from on high an aspect of the human condition too often eluded: our own bestiality. Le Devoir