An audio book. Also known as "The garden of earthly bodies".
Two alternated timelines. In one, the main character Marianne starts as a child in Lancaster. Her younger sister Maria gets leukemia, dies for 2 minutes (sepsis) then is in remission. Marianne leaves home, working in London writing articles. She moves in with Chris. When she pops back to the family, she's worried about Maria's state of mind and takes her back to London for a break. Maria suicides at a tube station.
In the other, Marianne is in mourning for the death of Maria. She thinks she will split up with Chris. Thick hairs are growing down her spine. Her doctor gets her a place at a remote Welsh clinic, Nede - healthy food, no electronic devices, etc - "a refuge from the ego". She loses track of time. She thinks she's being drugged. As part of the therapy, patients are locked naked into coffins that contain soil.
The clinic's not in Wales. Are loads of doctors in the basement? She manages to steal some files. She discovers that over 30 people have neural nerve endings emerging on their spine, that can grow 3"/hour when in contact with soil. She's tied naked to a tree by the doctors as an experiment. She dies, merging with the tree.
The language can be rich - "At university, she filled herself from the bottom up"; "the darkness dismantled both their outlines"; "Marianne fell quickly asleep. The revelation that she was tired occured a few seconds before giving in to it with the kind of yielding, yolky warmth one has when sleep is the single most desirable thing imaginable, the only thing imaginable"; "two flies crowded the dying light"
Other reviews
- the fiction fox (an interesting idea [that] quickly divulged [sic] into a convoluted mess that lacked the emotional depth I was hoping for)
- goodreads
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