The Body Builders by Albertine Clarke review – a compelling debut of mental meltdown

A young woman’s dissociation from reality and her road to recovery are vividly rendered in this striking novel Meet Ada, the anguished young narrator of 26-year-old Albertine Clarke’s radically strange and engrossing debut novel. Adrift in London, Ada occupies herself by swimming in her apartment’s basement pool and generally hiding from the world until she finds herself on the verge of a tumultuous mental collapse. If you’re allergic to the kind of novel in which characters exchange lines s...

By Jude Cook