Sally Oliver earned a master's in English at Lancaster University before moving to London to start a career in publishing. She now works for the agency Greene & Heaton. Garden of Earthly Bodies is her debut novel.
"""Garden of Earthly Bodies ripples with visceral language that conceals an ominous underbelly, ever threatening to burst free. . . . Oliver's prose is quite captivating. She writes with a poetic precision, deftly balancing sections with words charged with sexual and fatalistic tension in equal parts."" --Chicago Review of Books ""A beautifully written and intensely felt novel. Its subject matter--grief and mortality--is timeless, but its method, a startling combination of emotional realism and gothic horror, feels brand-new.""--Ian McGuire, author of The North Water and The Abstainer ""A deep and complex exploration of life and trauma""--Strange Horizons Magazine ""A visceral vortex of blood and trauma [with] a uniquely elegant literary style . . . every bit horrific as it is intelligent . . . Fans of gothic, classic literary horror, this one is for you.""--Cemetery Dance Magazine ""An affecting portrait of a young life shaped by grief, set against an unnerving, surreal medical backdrop, somewhere between My Year of Rest and Relaxation and A Cure for Wellness. . . . A remarkable, thought-provoking, vivid book."" --Will Wiles, author of The Way Inn and Plume ""Daring, unsettling, and original, Garden of Earthly Bodies is a debut to savor. Sally Oliver writes with startling intensity."" --Victoria Gosling, author of Before the Ruins ""I love Sally's writing. . . . The plot of Garden of Earthly Bodies was wonderfully intriguing, but it was the emotion in the story and the quality of the writing that sang out to me."" --Helen Fisher, author of Faye, Faraway ""Intelligent, addictive, and disturbing. Sally Oliver is a thoughtful, gorgeous writer, and this layered exploration of trauma, family, and selfhood will linger."" --Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House and What Should Be Wild ""It's hard to believe Garden of Earthly Bodies is a debut novel because the writing and pacing are so confident and assured. Compulsive and deeply unsettling. Don't start it if you have stuff to do!""--Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures ""Sally Oliver has created a deeply unsettling story, told at a brilliantly controlled pace and rendered in luminous prose. It's like the love child of early Ian McEwan and Nicola Barker."" --Ali Millar, author of The Last Days"