My Body Keeps Your Secrets – Lucia Osborne-Crowley

Lucia Osborne-Crowley has already proven she has the chops with her long-form essay I Choose Elena, which I read and reviewed last year. In My Body Keeps Your Secrets, her first full-length book, she continues to wrangle with the Mobius strip of trauma, health, and shame.

Osborne-Crowley interviewed nearly 100 women and non-binary people to unearth the ways in which the secrets we keep about what has happened to us are written over our bodies and our lives. My dear friends at Allen & Unwin were kind enough to send me a copy for review.

As with I Choose Elena, My Body Keeps Your Secrets is not an easy read, but (again) as with I Choose Elena, I found myself nodding furiously the whole way through. Every other page offers a lightbulb moment or the kind of insight that will make you gasp.

This is up there with Jess Hill’s See What You Made Me Do in terms of offering a brave and broad account of the impact of patriarchal violence.

Osborne-Crawley deserves a wide readership; her tireless efforts to examine and self-examine will resonate for all readers, regardless of their own identities and histories.