Chrysalis

Anna Metcalfe, one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, makes her debut with this book about a young woman who tries to escape the expectations of society by reshaping her body and mind through extreme means. She finds the present hard to inhabit, and she believes that a heavier, more commanding body would steady her thoughts and restore her mental force. At its heart the novel asks what becomes of a woman who claims space for herself.

After a trauma, the enigmatic protagonist sets out to make herself bigger, stronger and more still. The reader sees her through three people, each drawn to her in a different way, who must live with the fallout of her unusual transformation. Each of them offers a fragment of who she was before she became someone new.

Elliot is a recluse who first notices her at the gym, watches her body change, and eventually becomes the first to follow her example. Bella, her mother, grows anxious about the hold her daughter's new routine is taking on the people around her, and she looks back on a bond that was once close and sheltered, one her daughter has now left behind. Susie, a former colleague and best friend, gives her a refuge as she becomes an online figure whose viral meditation videos urge viewers to cut ties with everyone outside their lives and pursue self-sufficiency alone.

The novel explores selfhood and solitude and asks whether a woman can govern her own body while still belonging to the wider world. It answers that question in its own way.