Body Double
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 7 Apr 2026
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- 11,99 €
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- Pre-Order
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
In this Hitchcockian literary thriller, two women who fall in love and move in together begin to resemble each other, while elsewhere a young woman who works transcribing recordings for a ghostwriter receives a strange message that will come to upend her life
Naomi and Laura meet by chance at a department store café when Naomi mistakenly takes Laura’s coat. A strange magnetism is sparked during this first encounter, and eventually they form a romantic relationship and Laura moves in with Naomi. She tells Naomi little about herself, and appears to have no real life outside their relationship—but Naomi, lonely despite her job, friends, and hobbies, is convinced that their love was meant to be. As time goes by, Laura changes her appearance to resemble Naomi and soon begins to take her place in the world.
In the same city, a nameless woman works for a ghostwriter, transcribing recordings of his clients recalling their lives. Her weeks all look the same, and she moves in a predictable pattern between her home, the ghostwriter’s office, a café, and a movie theater. After hearing something on a recording that appears to be addressed to her, however, she gets the sense that she is being watched.
From Hanna Johansson, the critically acclaimed author of Antiquity, this alluring and propulsive thriller, explores deception and authenticity, obsession, and the uncanny.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Johansson (Antiquity) explores themes of doppelgängers, loneliness, and selfhood in her sly latest. The dizzying hall-of-mirrors narrative unfolds on two tracks, beginning with an isolated and yearning woman named Naomi who meets an enchanting stranger named Laura after they mistakenly wind up with each other's coats at a café. When they meet again at the same café, Laura confesses that their first meeting frightened her and that she's seen Naomi around since then, suggesting Naomi might be her doppelgänger ("I have seen you.... Have you seen me?"). A parallel narrative follows an unnamed woman who lives alone and works as a transcriptionist for a ghostwriter. One day, she plays a client's tape that is silent save for a woman's whisper, "I have seen you. Have you seen me?" The transcriptionist takes the question to be directed at her, despite the fact that she's "more invisible than the ghostwriter himself." Shaken, she begins to feel like she's "disappearing," or is "split in two." Johansson artfully teases out the echoes between the narrative threads, as Naomi and Laura see each other again and move in together and Laura unsettles Naomi by copying her clothing and hairstyle, even impersonating her on the phone. By the end, the two story lines seamlessly converge. Readers will be entranced.
