The Body Builders

A Novel

By: Albertine Clarke

Narrated by: Ebony Jonelle

Bloomsbury presents The Body Builders by Albertine Clarke, read by Ebony Jonelle.

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 London apartment building’s swimming pool, occasionally visiting with her cousin Francesca and meeting her friends, each of them chatting, drinking, posing invitations Ada ignores. Ada's parents are recently divorced after her father became a bodybuilder: he spends his days at the gym, which is crowded and bright, warm with human proximity, infrequently calling to express minor concerns around his daughter's well-being.

When she meets a man named Atticus by the pool, Ada immediately feels an intimate connection between them: they share a life, in a way she can’t explain. Little by little, Ada's estrangement from her familiar surroundings and from reality widens, as though seeing her reflection through a mirror, pieces of it falling away. 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 mysterious and potentially otherworldly force has created and designed for her. As this brilliant first novel pivots with masterful effect into the surreal and speculative, we move through Ada’s experiences of life like spokes on a wheel, profoundly surprised by the enduring mystery of our existence, and of our relationships with ourselves and others. When a person’s life, in the odd space between mind and body, is inherently one of isolation, are our connections with those around us merely projections of ourselves? And if not, where do they come from?

Albertine Clarke transforms the speculative into an entirely singular experience of deep interiority. The precision, subtlety, and confidence of her writing is nothing short of astonishing. THE BODY BUILDERS is new classic of the speculative fiction genre, landing like a blow, widening a crack that allows us to perceive the world wholly differently than we ever imagined.©2026 Albertine Clarke (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Critic reviews

"[A] radically strange and engrossing debut novel...Written with great clarity and imaginative resourcefulness, The Body Builders feels like a literary take on Polanski’s 'Repulsion' coupled with Michel Gondry’s 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.' While flirting with the subgenres of both body horror and the pejoratively named sad girl lit, the novel is finally a forceful performance from a promising new talent. (Jude Cook)

Ada is a unique protagonist, isolated and aloof yet desperate to form a proper relationship with her distant mother. This strange, surreal story is beautifully written and full of heart and longing. (Sara Lawrence)

Clarke is rich in “negative capability,” that quality admired by Keats which allows the artist not to impose boring and limiting certainties on their narrative...With this book, Clarke joins the ranks of allied fantasists such as Graham Joyce, Jonathan Carroll, Robert Aickman, and Haruki Murakami as dealers in the mundanely unsettling and comfortingly unreal. (Paul Di Filippo)

I was impressed by Clarke’s ability to create and maintain such a deep sense of interiority...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. (Brian Tanguay)

Is speculative surrealism a thing? If it’s not, I’m making it one to write about why I’m looking forward to The Body Builders...Lonely, but also fantastical. Definitely my kind of niche. (Oliver Scialdone)

A hypnotic novel about the separation between mind and body, The BodyBuilders narrates Ada, who, reeling from her parents’ divorce after her father decides to get jacked, falls into the orbit of a man named Atticus and sublimates herself within the speculative. (Sam Franzini)

Clarke looks inward into her characters and I desperately want to learn more about them. (Adam Vitcavage)

I was enraptured by this book. The Body Builders exhibits Albertine Clarke’s remarkable gifts – the boldness and precision of her imagination, the breadth of her ethical and intellectual concerns. She is a fearless writer, and I felt a shiver of admiration as I read every page. (Katie Kitamura, author of AUDITION)

If Philip K. Dick had written The Bell Jar, it may have resembled The Body Builders—at once smooth as android skin and sharp as shards of broken mirror. A stunning and haunting debut. (Camille Bordas, author of THE MATERIAL)

By turns tender and unsettling, The Body Builders is a spare yet profound enquiry into the bonds of family and the limits of the self, and what it means to be connected to other people. Full of stylish and unexpected touches - a debut that marks an important new talent.

An exciting and remarkably controlled debut using a brilliant sci-fi conceit to tell a story about estrangement, selfhood, and love.

A poignant debut

I cannot stop thinking or talking about this book, and although I'm not the type of person who reads / listens to books more than once, I'm pretty sure I will return to the Body Builders again someday. There are so many layers to this story! It will resonate with any young adult trying to learn how to love themselves, break free from childhood trauma and find their purpose in this chaotic world as an independent adult. I think it is also an important read for parents, especially in families experiencing trauma or divorce, to better understand how confusing and lonely life can be for youth when they feel uprooted, unloved and untethered.