Review: Nostalgia for Bodies

Reviewer: Ben Armstrong

Publisher: Erbacce Press

Author: Lydia Unsworth

Price: £10.00

This is a book struck with the limitations of the spaces, homes, and bodies we inhabit – its prose ticks over this concept again and again with an uncompromising precision. When speaking of being “too young for a long time before I was too old”, Unsworth touches on the temporal anxiety which underpins an entire generation: we are scared of our past and future inaction simultaneously. As we arrive into Scheveningen in the final lines of Nostalgia for Bodies, we learn that embracing potential itself, “where one thing might be becoming another”, might just be enough to overcome ourselves. Highly recommended.