Book Review: The Body Harvest

Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

In a desperate, depression-fueled search for a physical sickness that mirrors their defeated mental state, two loners find themselves on a bloody, manic revenge rampage.

Part body horror, part exploration of the destruction that grief can cause on our sense of wellness, The Body Harvest is disturbing, disgusting, and at times deliciously delusional.

The novel follows Olivia and Will, who bonded over feeling sickened with grief in a digital support group. They now live together in an apartment they can’t afford. The not-quite-couple spends all their time focused on and “working” toward getting new types of debilitating illnesses. Literally all their time is spent this way; there’s very little mention of work, eating food, sex for pleasure, or talking to other people in this novel, because the two protagonists do not do those things. Actually, they have avoided them for as long as they possibly can.

They only feel alive when they’re “crashing” from symptoms, and so they team up to “chase” any illness that may put their bodies out of commission. They dig deep into bins on the street, licking the items they find in hopes of catching something serious (not food poisoning, that’s too short-term to feel satisfying). They visit urgent care, offering tissues to sick people to get close to them, reaching into the hazardous waste bins and retrieving used needles to stab themselves when the nurses leave them alone in the room.

Their relationship is an example of how getting into a cycle of self-harm can take over your life, consuming all your thoughts. Author Michael J. Seidlinger presents a fascinating exploration of this dynamic through two depressed loners who are desperate to catch a fever that makes their skin break out into rashes.

One day a man named Zaff walks into their apartment and tells them he has the illness of all illnesses, and he can give it to them, too! But first, he must show them what it’s like to ride the high of an illness that offers “a brand new world” after they cross a fever temp of 103F.

Sometimes The Body Harvest feels like sci-fi, because as the events escalate, it’s unclear whether the main characters are inside a fantasy landscape, a shared psychosis, or a manic episode bursting into the world outside of their minds. At times, the power Will, Olivia, and Zaff wield in this heightened sickened state feels like that of vampires who can mind-control mere mortals with their charisma, charming people to their theatrical deaths without a second-thought or a second-glance. Olivia describes it as “the sheen and shimmer of the tail end of the euphoria”—the words “end of” doing some heavy lifting, because this illness is in fact terminal.

As the virus progresses in their bodies, they experience intense, but brief, attacks of dizzying, debilitating pain; In the time between these painful episodes, they feel invincible. The Body Harvest’s twists and turns take you to places you could never imagine. Have you seen the memes that say “[X] takes me places I wouldn’t go with a gun?” That’s exactly what this book does, time and time again.  

The gore in this novel is delivered in brief batches, but it is vivid and visceral. It’s really unlike anything I’ve read, even in straight-up horror fiction. I unfortunately started reading this book while eating a very delicious meal, which I would not recommend. The food was so flavorful and textured that I kept taking more bites without really thinking, but chewing while reading The Body Harvest was a harrowing experience—I kept frowning and flinching as I read descriptions of the main characters spitting into each other’s mouths to infect each other. It was so unexpectedly disgusting, but I could not look away.

That said, the majority of the book is about the grossness of having a body and not caring what happens to it: For example, at one point Olivia gets so feverish that she urinates while sleeping on their shared mattress, and for the duration of the book they return to sleep in that same bed, having never cleaned it, remarking on the odor that fills the room.

Once they meet Zaff, their mysterious guardian angel of illness, his first acts of violence feel random and chaotic—a dramatic show of the vampire-like powers of strength and manipulation gained by way of this new virus. Later, Will and Olivia focus on enacting revenge on those who wronged them in their before times; they go so far as to enchant their way into a better version of their old lives. These are gory, grotesque, and graphically described—a penis sliced in half so that it resembles a “wilted banana peel”; a domestic abuser turning purple as he is choked by his own belt; Olivia calling for her assistant to film her bleeding from the eyes to achieve online success. 

In its purest form, The Body Harvest is about the mania, the self-destruction, and all-consuming way that nothing else matters when you’re so anxious and depressed that you barely feel like you exist. This novel is ambitious in ways that I’m certain will sink in even more in the weeks after I’ve read it. I suspect I’ll continue to be astounded at the layers and raw emotion Seidlinger wrote into these corrupted, careless people who deserved more kindness than life—and their family, friends, lovers, and colleagues—ever showed them.

There’s a thematic brilliance, too, in the way Seidlinger made these overlooked people, discarded by society, the main characters of his novel—and in the nonjudgmental way he wrote Olivia and Will falling from their privileged positions to a status that society would deem unsavory, and in the clever, depraved way they later rise back up the ranks by way of virus-induced mania. I loved that Olivia and Will know what they look like to the outside world for the majority of the book—they know how strangers will react to them, and they often use that to their advantage.

Readers can expect storylines that follow patterns of self-harm, featuring scenes of characters cutting themselves and others, domestic and child abuse, mutilation and disfigurement, suicidal ideation and attempts, and a description of the process and aftermath of self-immolation.

I will also note that I use the word “mania” to describe the state of their experience of this pseudo-magical illness as it read to me, a person with bipolar who has experienced by-the-book medically-diagnosed mania in its various forms, very often, for many years. Their illness wasn’t presented with a direct comparison to mania, but there are certainly parallels to it that hint at it being a mental illness or even a hallucination. For those who may have concern about my use of that word when describing these storylines, I’d say that even if you do read Olivia and Will’s wild rampages as mania, I believe it was written as true to the experience—I did not find it offensive or stereotypical, nor a caricature for the purpose of mimicking a real illness.

That said, with the frequent discussion of their suicidal thoughts and attempts, extensive explanations about the impact of both Will and Olivia’s past anxieties manifesting as paranoid and depressive behavior, the multiple mentions of them living amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and their blatant attempts to infect themselves with the bodily fluids of vulnerable and sick people (without thought of who they may infect along the way), I would advise that anyone feeling anything less than settled or stable in their headspace with any of these topics strongly consider reading this only when they feel their closer to their best. 

On the topic of COVID-19, though, I will say I really appreciated that the author framed those who are still masking to avoid the new strain of COVID-19 doing rounds in the novel as kind, generous, and considerate of their fellow citizens. I was honestly a bit taken aback because (as a chronically ill reader who is still living a pretty isolated life avoiding illnesses) I had gotten into the rhythm of enjoying these reckless, aching humans who have no care in the world, literally willing to crash to their death if it made them feel something. Suddenly seeing characters representing myself in this context—and being respected and honored in a space where it was both unexpected and frankly, not necessary—made this story feel even more grounded in compassion. 

Eventually, Will, Olivia, and their twisted guardian angel in seeking to ravage their immune systems serve strong “hurt people hurt people” vibes, but when we first meet them, they are floundering and spiraling, acting out of pain with the intention to only hurt themselves. It’s very clear, heartbreakingly so, that these two people are clinging to the bodily sensations of illness out of a tangled, torturous combination of grief, rage, and their awareness that they’ve fallen so low in society that anything they tried wouldn’t get them out of the hole they’ve stumbled into.

Seidlinger opens The Body Harvest with the J.G. Ballard quote: “I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.” and then goes on to do exactly that. Society isn’t built to protect or support felons (Will) or victims of abuse (Olivia) in any tangible or accessible way. If you’ve ever been so anxious that you cannot leave the house or so depressed that your only vague sense of motivation comes through a friend who understands the darkness you’re overwhelmed by and helps you seek something self-destructive to set it alight—you’ll understand this couple. You’ll recognize parts of yourself in Will and Olivia immediately. “I lost everything—my girlfriend, my savings, my sanity! When you went and pointed blame square on me, you immediately made it so that I was banished to the margins of society. I’ve dug through dumpsters. I’ve had dozens of diseases. I have licked semen clean off a stranger’s dick. I’ve done it all and was sober, completely lucid doing so. And what did I get? Strength. I got strength. With every new low, I gained knowledge that I could only go up from there. Higher.” —It’s in moments like this that the reader’s heart breaks even more for Will, who admits to his worst enemy that he’s been seeking out illnesses for the rush of experiencing his body healing itself, rising from the ashes of sickness to chase an incredible high based simply on his immune response.

I’d highly recommend The Body Harvest to readers who enjoyed the also-often-gross toxic lesbian throuple novel A Good Happy Girl by Marissa Higgins and for anyone who wants to read unlikable but empathetic characters who have no control over their lives, spiraling into whatever mess comes their way next, hoping for the worst. 

The very end of The Body Harvest is genuinely shocking. Michael J. Seidlinger crafted an unexpected, supremely clever culmination of all that Will and Olivia went through. It’s one of my favorite things in the world when the title of a novel appears in a phrase or concept in the book; the thrilling reveal that inspired this book’s title will go down in history as one of the greatest to ever do it. I have never gasped so many times in a row before.

---

Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of The Body Harvest by Michael J. Seidlinger! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.