'The Vivisectors' Is A Brilliant Novel In Any Reality | Defector

Williams began having seizures in young adulthood after moving to a new city with a new language. While working in a cafe and learning beyond simple phrases, she experienced episodes linked to temporal lobe misfires. Language and memory functions became destabilized, causing her to forget words in English, think sentences backward, and make tenuous connections between ideas and objects. Unable to hold onto words, ideas, or memories, she developed obsessive cataloging and built complex sentences that circled back and collapsed. She later shaped many of these sentences into a book. The Doloriad became an award-winning debut with body-horror grotesqueries and off-kilter theology, where closeness to Christ corresponds to wounds opening on the body.

"“I spent a lot of time getting orders wrong, being reprimanded without quite understanding why. It was useful to feel so stupid.” Around this time, misfires in her temporal lobe began to incite epileptic episodes. These issues in the part of the brain responsible for language and memory completely destabilized Williams. Already struggling to get a foothold in her new surroundings, she then began to forget words in her native English."

"“She found that she was thinking entire sentences backward. She made woozy, tenuous connections between ideas and objects. ‘Everything suggested everything else in the strangest of ways,’ she said.” Unable to hold onto words, ideas, or memories, Williams began an obsessive cataloging. She built a network of complex sentences that would circle back and collapse in on themselves like murmurating birds."

"“It was as if each word was ‘driven by the need to confirm each and every thing that had preceded them,’ as she wrote for Granta in 2022.” Soon these sentences began to pile up, and eventually she was able to shape many of them into a book. The Doloriad, Williams's award-winning 2022 debut, reached an instant sort of cult-classic status."

"“The book suggests that as one gets closer to Christ, His wounds open up on your body. The Divine and The Gross often coexist.” The Doloriad’s cult-classic status came partially for its body-horror grotesqueries, but also for its undeniable beauty and off-kilter theology."

Read at Defector