An A+ for gore and yuck

Beautiful Brutal Bodies
by Linda Cheng

Toronto: Listening Library, 2025
$20.99 / 9781250865816

Reviewed by Jessica Poon

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Beautiful Brutal Bodies by Linda Cheng is a YA horror novel that more than lives up to its alliterative title. 

Tian is a singer and songwriter with an enormous fandom, but after “multiple incidents of apparent self-immolation that occurred during a live performance,” Tian, along with her constant companion and childhood friend, Liya, attend a spiritual healing retreat near Hong Kong. It’s the first time Tian’s been on a plane, or really anywhere except home.

Despite being famous, Tian, like Rapunzel, has a life not unlike that of a prisoner. Her mother’s died, leaving her in the care of Liya’s mother, Auntie Chu. Shenyu, a songwriting partner of Tian’s, is also at the spiritual retreat, a pleasant surprise that also marks the first time they’ve ever met in person. 

As you might expect from a too good to be true, far away spiritual retreat specifically tailored for burnt-out musicians, there are disturbing visions of a wronged celestial maiden, revelatory discoveries, and constant danger. 

Tian believes that, for her own health, she must be “raised in careful isolation” because of an autoimmune disorder. On a regular basis, Tian’s stomach is administered with a numbing agent and a “sample” is taken by shaving off her skin, which, if the book beginning with self-immolations didn’t tip you off, is a sign of recurrent, unhinged darkness in the novel. In Tian’s words:

Needle and tube for blood collection. Gauze pads and ointments. I am intimately familiar with these instruments and all the ways they are used to poke and prod, to retrieve bits and pieces of my body.
… There is a jagged faint scar on my lower stomach, below my belly button. The inflammation always begins there. First with the redness and the itching, then the skin grows tough and thickens. 
Auntie Chu once explain the condition as a rare autoimmune disorder that my mother also suffered from. If left untreated, my skin would continue to harden, and the affected areas would grow, the damage spreading to my muscles, to my joints, and eventually to my organs.

If the title didn’t give it away, Vancouver-based Cheng (Gorgeous Gruesome Faces) doesn’t shy away from brutality or blood. Another example where the imagery is strong:

Deep gashes rip across her face, tearing across her forehead, her nose, her jaw. Strips of flayed skin hang from the open wounds, the white ridge of her cheekbone exposed beneath the torn flesh. Her lips are slashed open to reveal black gums deprived of teeth. Where her eyes should be there are two grisly, drooling sockets of red.

It’s an A+ for bringing the gore and the yuck. 

The beginning of the novel introduces a character, an enormous fan of Tian, who doesn’t have any further prominence later, though Cheng does usefully demonstrate how Tian, a famous songwriter, is perceived, before she delves into Tian’s first-person voice. 

Though described as centring on a Sapphic romance, physical ardour is kept wholesome and tame, per genre conventions. There’s a scene where Tian and Liya share a bed—it’s not particularly erotic, exactly, but it is deeply intimate without many words being spoken, and it occurs early on, when their relationship is simultaneously strained and close. 

The story alternates between Tian narrating in first person in the present tense and an omniscient third person narrator outlines the past of “The Princess” (Tian) and “The Shadow” (Liya), but in the present tense. The connection between these two sections becomes clear later. The continuous use of the present tense, no matter the perspective, augments immediacy and adventurousness. The intermittent Princess and the Shadow sections are an instance of dramatic irony, whereby the reader understands the connection between Tian and Liya long before Tian does. 

The phrase celestial maiden was one I found maddening, though perhaps this was by design, as it’s essentially a more poetic way of saying exploited-and-magical-possibly-virginal-unmarried-young-woman. 

What is the celestial maiden’s deal and how is she related to Tian? What is the true connection between Tian and Liya, who were once inseparable but now seem to resent each other even as they rely on each other? (If your guess is trauma bonding, well, you’re not exactly wrong, but there’s far more specificity and mythology involved). And, upon discovering the truth about her past—and how it has been strategically withheld—will Tian find independence and freedom? Does Shenyu’s fox charm, purchased to repel unsuitable paramours, have any efficacy?   

Shenyu provides most of the comic relief in this novel. I wished he had a larger role, but I enjoyed him whenever he showed up.  My favourite line of his: “The first person who said that cutting your hair after a breakup is cathartic probably just regretted their ugly-ass haircut and wanted everyone else to suffer, too.” (A close second: “I would definitely choose dysentery over this.”) Liya doesn’t particularly care for Shenyu, who relentlessly tries to curry favour with her nonetheless. 

Structurally impressive, mythologically rich, and recurrently dark, Cheng has carefully infused just enough humour and hope in a novel where it’s easy to root for the good guys.

Jessica Poon is a writer in East Vancouver. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon has reviewed recent books by Neko Case, Karina Halle, Jen Sookfong Lee, Bal Khabra, Léa Taranto, Martin West, and Terry Berryman for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

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Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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