Description

AN IRISH TIMES DEBUT AUTHOR TO LOOK OUT FOR 2025
A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF 2025

A woman finds herself navigating a co-dependent relationship with a ghost. A waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. A doctor puts his patient on a cleanse to ‘purify’ her mind, body and soul.

Through playful but provocative prose, Rose Keating’s stories traverse a realm both dreamlike and nightmarish, exposing – to the bone – the absurdities and horrors of the feminine experience. Oddbody prods a finger at societal norms, gleefully turns familiar tropes on their head and announces Keating as an audacious new voice in Irish fiction.

‘Joyously diabolic’ CAMILLA GRUDOVA
‘Dark and sumptuous and unapologetically peculiar’ LISA McINERNEY
‘Marvellously unnerving’ ERIC LaROCCA

Publisher Review

Dark and relentlessly weird . . . Full of heart and blood, this impressive, wildly imaginative collection heralds the arrival of a compelling new voice in speculative fiction * * New York Times * * Startling, funny, alarming [and] superbly crafted . . . Confident, witty and perceptive. These are sharp and memorable horror stories about the most ordinary horrors: having a body; having a heart; being a woman in the 21st-century West — KEVIN POWER * * Irish Times * * This is weird girl fiction at its finest – an uneasy, bold and subversive collection of astonishing tales that left me hungry for more. With Rose Keating, we are witnessing the birth of a rare and precious talent in literature — LUCY ROSE, author of THE LAMB Brutal, beautiful, bloodthirsty. Rose Keating writes with the vivid grace of a poet and the clear-eyed insight of someone who knows a ghost or two. One of the most memorable debuts I’ve read in a long time — KIRSTY LOGAN Rib tickling and joyously diabolic, this book breathes a new and invigorating life into Irish literature — CAMILLA GRUDOVA There’s an impish playfulness and a deeply potent blight spreading from each story collected in Rose Keating’s marvelously unnerving Oddbody. This superior collection of short fiction revels in the absurdity of human and non-human existence, gleefully celebrates the power of the uncanny, the atrocious and the bizarre. This is an ambitiously written and gorgeously imaginative collection penned by a brave new voice in literature with a very bright future ahead. Oddbody is one of the most audacious and thought provoking collections I’ve ever read — ERIC LaROCCA Here’s a collection from a writer defined by great curiosity and compassion. These stories are dark and sumptuous and unapologetically peculiar — LISA McINERNEY Playful, brutal and disgustingly readable. Rose Keating is truly one to watch — HEATHER PARRY Wonderfully weird . . . Keating successfully marries gorgeous prose to playfully grotesque scenarios * * Daily Mail * * In these unflinching stories, Keating builds a macabre world in which her characters are utterly free even within their various compulsions, constraints and grotesque circumstances. Compassionate, gross, deeply compelling. A must-read * * Kirkus Reviews * *