Bodies of Light is a deeply poignant tale of a psychologically tumultuous nineteenth century upbringing set in the atmospheric world of Pre-Raphaelitism & the early suffrage movement. Ally (older sister of May in Night Waking), is intelligent, studious & engaged in an eternal
- & losing
- battle to gain her mother`s approval & affection. Her mother, Elizabeth, is a religious zealot, keener on feeding the poor & saving prostitutes than on embracing the challenges of motherhood. Even when Ally wins a scholarship & is accepted as one of the first female students to read medicine in London, it still doesn`t seem good enough. The first in a two-book sequence, Bodies of Light will propel Sarah Moss into the upper echelons of British novelists. It is a triumphant piece of historical fiction & a profoundly moving master class in characterisation.