Being thrust into a different place and time is one of the pleasures of reading fiction ... This is how I felt reading Albertine Clarke’s The Body Builders. Clarke creates an intense interiority which is at times claustrophobic ... I was impressed by Clarke’s ability to create and maintain such a deep sense of interiority, even as I struggled to feel an affinity for Ada. The discomfort and disequilibrium I felt stayed with me, and caused me to question my own perceptions, a testament to Clarke’s control of the narrative.
Hypnotic ... Readers’ constant access to Ada’s internal thoughts is not oppressive but intriguing, as we follow Ada’s journey toward self-knowledge of her body and come to learn that Clarke’s title has more than one meaning.
Clarke’s gift for worldbuilding and character creation is arresting from the opening pages. She manages to lead readers into a space in which time, place, and identity blur and shift like the shimmer on an oil slick without ever losing them—an admirable feat. Toward the end, though, the novel fizzles somewhat ... A promising if somewhat diaphanous debut in want of a few more teeth.
