Body Language

A New York Times Editors’ Choice

“Marvelous . . . [Howrey] has tapped a vein of life’s messy, heartbreaking and hilarious moments.. . . I doubt even Chekhov could engineer a scene as satisfying or as poignant.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Expertly crafted . . . smart, sardonic and powerful . . . Howrey delivers big feelings. . . keeping the reader on the edge of their seat, alternately howling with laughter, holding their breath awaiting resolution, and weeping.” —Los Angeles Times

“Both deft and generous, with tenderness, cleverness, and no small degree of audacity. The writing is both very funny and offhandedly graceful, with characters who feel as if they might just walk off the page and begin speaking to you in your kitchen.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“An urgent exploration of aging, agency, and female self-possession.” —Oprah Daily

“Body Language is one of the best novels I’ve read in years. It’s brainy and joyful and philosophical and really, really funny. It made me cry, which few books do. And Meg Howrey’s sentences—rhythmic, lithe, precise—are just incredibly pleasurable. I loved it.” —Leni Zumas, author of Wolf Bells

“I loved this book. Body Language hums with lyricism, quiet power, and the kind of stubborn humor that sustains us humans in our darkest moments. Meg Howrey’s tale of three complicated sisters facing their mother’s decline moves deftly, inexorably from the mundane to the metaphysical. An ambitious and deeply satisfying book.” —Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

“Howrey’s emotional precision and characterizations are astounding. She weaves depths of familial and personal history for each character to create a beautiful and moving novel exploring the many stories that make up a woman’s life.” —Booklist, starred review

“Howrey is a reliably beautiful stylist, and her slyly funny prose and blade-sharp insights into human behavior really should put her in the same conversation as writers like Ann Patchett and Barbara Kingsolver. . . A comfort meal of a novel: poignant and prismatic.” —Kirkus

“Edgy and endearing . . . There’s much to love in this unsentimental but briskly hopeful tale about the power of family.” —Publishers Weekly

“A full-throated, high-minded, big-hearted embrace of family and, especially, sisterhood via thorny exploration of a host of important topics we should talk about more than we do. Every character and every relationship in Body Language feels sharply real – endearing, maddening, trying in both senses of the word – in short, like family.” –Laurie Frankel, author of Family Family

“Meg Howrey has achieved a difficult feat: a novel about an achingly painful subject that is a pleasure and comfort to read. Wise, witty, and contemporary in the best way, Body Language is a novel that you’ll want to press into the hands of friends, sisters . . . and maybe even your mother.” –Isabel Kaplan, author of NSFW

“Meg Howrey writes with a satiric eye and a generous heart, and I was won over by her hilarious and disarmingly honest novel about mothers and daughters and what it really means to take care of the people you love.” –Marisa Silver, author of At Last

“Meg Howrey’s Body Language is a tender meditation on letting go. Three distinct sisters, each on their individual life path, return home to their ailing mother, igniting in them a love that will reshape the story of their lives in new and unforgettable ways.” –Nora Lange, author of Us Fools