‘Harriet Armstrong’s singular, arresting debut… is narrated in a bored monotone that gradually flowers into something extraordinary: a feminist statement of mental unravelling, which is also a plea for the life of the mind. This is marvellously realised as the novel unfolds into a study of interiority and narrative, both an embrace of and a resistance against nihilism. Armstrong has created a form away from such debasing tropes and genres as “sad girl” lit… [her] work seems both new and utterly timeless.’ — Catherine Taylor, Observer

‘It’s rare to encounter so purely candid and redolent a portrait of a life… the novel inspires something closer to exaltation… To Rest Our Minds and Bodies is a fraught chamber piece of emotional intensity: an age-old story – of the highs and lows of first love, and of a young person finding their place in the world – told in a way that feels unsettling, exciting and very fresh.’ — Lucy Scholes, four-star review, Daily Telegraph

‘Armstrong [shows] the reader the world through the eyes of a somewhat disassociated consciousness now tortured — a kind of adolescence on steroids — and this is deeply absorbing… The novel aligns with contemporary writing such as Convenience Store Woman by Japanese author Sayaka Murata… The build-up of simple phrases makes for beautiful depictions of intimacy… The ending of the novel is a tour de force.’ — Fiona O’Connor, Morning Star

‘The book follows a young woman in the final year of her psychology degree as she becomes increasingly obsessed with Luke, a master’s student who lives next door. The syntax is unusual and highly specific, punctuated by hundreds of ‘somehow’s, ‘actually’s and ‘suddenly’s, as though the young narrator anticipates an incredulous reader. But the effect is to recreate the way that, at that age, it feels like everything that happens to you is happening for the first time ever.’ — Laura Hackett, ‘What we’re reading this week - by the Times book team’, The Times

‘To Rest Our Minds & Bodies is a beautiful, upsetting, serious novel, yet also seriously funny… warm and engaging, emotional and articulate, witty and funny, and very, very, bleakly, real…. A complex portrait of obsession, but alsoof misjudgement… Armstrong depicts an obsessive personality whose obsession is stoked by the minor attentions of a minor person who is mostly well-behaved and well-intentioned only because they’re not interesting enough to be cruel… Is the avoidance of cruelty a strength? Is failing to reject (to clearly and firmly push away) an obsessee as much of a taking advantage as fucking them (which they want) would be? A dark, serious, engaging and important novel about youth and growing up… A haunting, echoing novel [about] the horrors of performed socialising and the social expectations of desire and sexual response… The need to be loved and to love… The wish to understandand to be understood… The crack crack crack of loneliness and confusion that life is filled with… Thoughts of hope and desire and wishfulness and regret andconfusion and aloneness and optimism and despair and and and and andeverything, really. It’s my kinda book. Maybe it isn’t yours. But I fucking liked it alot a lot a lot…’ — Scott Manley Hadley, Triumph of the Now

'The book describes brilliantly that in-between nature of university life. A striking work and recommended.' — Paul Fulcher, on Goodreads