In-Store: Albertine Clarke: The Body Builders w/ Alexa Brahme

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/ZZbSlGuFuK0
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

For readers of Megan Nolan and Sheila Heti, a mesmerizing Borgesian literary debut about the frayed borders between our bodies and minds.

Ada lives a solitary life. She spends her days in her apartment building’s swimming pool, occasionally visiting with her cousin Francesca. Ada’s parents are recently divorced after her father became a bodybuilder: He spends his days at the gym, warm with human proximity. Her mother spends her days alone.

When Atticus turns up by the pool, Ada immediately feels an intimate connection between them: They share a life, maybe even a consciousness. Little by little, Ada’s estrangement from her familiar reality widens. She worries she may be losing her mind. After her mother entreats Ada to join her on a remote Greek holiday, Ada is jolted out of the physical world and into a new, artificial environment, one that a potentially otherworldly force has designed for her. The Facility makes real Ada’s every wish but hides secrets behind its closed doors and endless hallways. It asks: When a person’s life, in the odd space between mind and body, is inherently one of isolation, are our relationships merely projections of ourselves?

Albertine Clarke transforms the speculative into an entirely singular experience of deep interiority. With precision, subtlety, and confidence The Body Builders lands like a blow, widening a crack that allows us to perceive the world differently than we ever imagined.

Albertine Clarke received an MFA in fiction from the University of Florida and studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh where she won the Lewis Edwards Memorial prize for creative writing. Raised in London, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Alexa Yasemin Brahme is a writer from southern California. She received her MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Robert J. Dau PEN Award, and Best of the Net. She currently lives in Brooklyn, where she is a bookseller at Books Are Magic. Good News is her first novel.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Books Are Magic