April 2026: Maddie Mortimer’s Maps of our Spectacular Bodies

About this sermon

This month in the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, we’re reading a novel that doesn’t just tell a story—it inhabits one. Jen sits down with author Maddie Mortimer to talk about Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, a breathtaking and formally inventive debut that explores what it means to live inside a body that is changing, remembering, and, ultimately, letting go. At the center is Lia, a woman living with terminal cancer—but this story unfolds as a chorus, with voices that include her family, her own inner world, and even the cancer itself. Together, Jen and Maddie explore the deeply personal roots of the novel, including Maddie’s own experience of losing her mother, and how that grief shaped the book’s emotional precision. They talk about why she chose to move beyond a traditional narrative and instead capture the feeling of illness—the disorientation, the fractured sense of time, and the way memory lives not just in the mind, but in the body. They also tap into the book’s striking structure—the visual and sensory journey it creates for readers—and how that imaginative form is now being adapted for the stage, bringing the story full circle to Maddie’s theatrical roots. In this conversation, we consider what it means to listen to the body as a narrator, how love shows up in the smallest moments, and why stories like this invite us to pay closer attention to the life we are living right now. This one is tender, surprising, and quietly unforgettable. Thought-provoking Quotes: ★ “For me, the writing process was much more about thinking of cancer and the way that it moves through language and how language can metastasize on the page and the rhythm of this incredibly hyperactive virus, this illness kind of consuming a body, the way that a dark thought could consume a mind.” – Maddie Mortimer ★ “I'm quite a restless reader and I think I get bored quite quickly. What I look for in books is that immediacy of how exciting a sentence is or how funny or moving or strange it is.” – Maddie Mortimer ★ “So much of the process of putting words on a page and writing fiction, specifically, is that you surrender yourself. I think it's less about me feeling like I know anything or have anything to say, but more about removing myself so that you feel like you're listening to the world and to the people that you've met, and the impressions that you, your body, whatever, have absorbed.” – Maddie Mortimer ★ “The realm of the playground is the page. It’s where anything goes.” – Maddie Mortimer ★ “There's something really special about a group of people in a room that are willing to give their time to writers reading their words. It’s got that kind of religious, congregational quality to it.” – Maddie Mortimer Resources Mentioned in This Episode: ➢ Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer - https://amzn.to/3NRIPCC ➢ Gilead: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson - https://amzn.to/4dFVYJC ➢ Booker Prize: Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies - https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/maps-of-our-spectacular-bodies ➢ Jen Hatmaker Book Club - https://shop.jenhatmaker.com/collections/book-club?srsltid=AfmBOoriPvTDl3MAspLOwF2sMjqu3tmHzwmOex7CKgSLNzOlfBPmpUWb Guest’s Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/maddiemortimer/ Twitter - https://x.com/MaddieMortimer Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.