The Quiet Act of Loving Bones   Katie Willis

“I’m not a bad person,” I turn and whisper to her.
She smiles.
On this day, I make a fresh language. I align my skull, my pelvis. Perhaps I will be rid of the dead parts of me now? I think. Perhaps I will stop the thieving? The music starts up. I go down to the feet; I go down in search of arrows. I rise, a bird, puff-chested, rejoicing. I have it under my feet, the new world.


It is rare to come across a book that feels, at the same time, overwhelmingly strange and delightfully familiar. The Quiet Act of Loving Bones takes you into a world that is intimate and physical but also ghostly and ecstatic. You'll dance with it until you feel dizzy and transformed. I think Katie Willis has written a classic.

- Toby Litt


Read it.It’s like nothing you’ve ever read before.

- Eva Aldea


Katie Willis has written a beautifully precise dance anti-narrative. Her story is about the quiet defiance of using an interior world to navigate the complexities of embodied life. This book is for anyone who has been an adolescent or a dreamer.

- Laura Joyce


Katie Willis was a ballet dancer. She lives in London, close to a river, dividing her time between water and land, home and hospital. She writes about women and water, bodies and bones, and the stories that bones hold individually and collectively. This is her first novel.