Body Electric by C.E. Smith is a small book that artfully wrangles tremendous issues such as post-mortem privacy, bias, morality and mortality into a mere 121 pages. The story centers around the complexities of a relationship between a father and his teenaged daughter 4 years after her mother's passing and the ramifications of the mother's absence in such trivial and yet complicated things as the young woman's first school dance, her first date, and her birthday. Interwoven into the narrative is the father's work as a pathologist and his group's decision (despite his objections) to participate in a reality show called American Autopsy.
What I perhaps enjoyed and appreciated more than the masterfully crafted and interwoven story lines, was the use of language in this story. As a bit of a word nerd I tend to geek out a bit when I encounter a really stupendous word, and there were a plethora of extraordinary words in this work, although the use of the word "bromide" is by far my favorite, which he uses by it's lesser known (at least by me) definition of "a phrase or platitude that, having been employed excessively, suggests insincerity or a lack of originality in the speaker".
** Body Electric won the 2013 Paris Literary Prize and can be purchased at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore.
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