Tilly Lawless’s Nothing But My Body follows an unnamed queer sex worker across eight days scattered through a little over a year, moving between Sydney, Berlin, Orange and Bellingen.

Relationships dissolve, new attachments flare up, work continues, bushfires consume the Australian summer and eventually the pandemic closes the world down. The work traces the consciousness of those in it, a lot of thought looping through sex, jealousy, friendship, landscape, politics, memory and the stubbornness of having a body.

Lawless writes with an unusually porous first person, allowing the narrator’s attention to move almost associatively between the immediate and the enormous — a bath, a lover, a dance floor, the burning coastline, the politics of sex work. Romantic obsession is continually set against friendship and chosen family, while sex work is neither treated as confession nor political symbol. A formally loose, intimate Australian novel about embodiment, queer community, obsession and the small freedoms available inside systems that would prefer cleaner categories.

Edition / Condition: Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2021. First edition, first printing. Paperback. Light handling and shelf wear to covers; internally clean and unmarked, binding firm. Very good condition.