Bodies of Work

Curse you, Clay McLeod Chapman! I really wanted to feel nothing but contempt for Winston Kemper, and while his victims remind each other that he does not deserve our compassion, in so doing, they remind us why he does.

Bodies of Work follows Winston Kemper - whose name conjures up serial killer Ed Kemper but whose old age and harmless appearance bring to mind the visuals from the arrest and trial of Joseph James DeAngelo (aka the Golden State Killer), a man in his sixties as the book opens who has killed half a dozen “lost girls”, teenage girls who won’t be missed, have run away from home and found themselves in the church where he works as a janitor.

As the story is told, through his perspective but also through the victims’ ghosts/spirits, we learn that he, too, is lost, a nonentity who lives alone and is barely noticed in his position at the church.

The plot of Bodies of Work is fairly simple; Kemper murders these girls, they join each other in the spirit world and plot their escape and revenge.

What makes Bodies of Work special is Chapman’s evocative language. Even as Winston Kemper creates his art - collages fashioned from old catalogs, magazines, coloring books, and children’s books - Clay McLeod Chapman is creating art, virtual poetry through his language which conjures up colorful visions of the Butterfly Girls and their battle to escape from the world they’ve been trapped in by Kemper.

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the advance copy for my unbiased review.