'We didn't do anything at first. It was just an idea that grew in the dark, like a mushroom. Some pale, round spore of a thought finding form in the darkness. In your mind. And yours.'
It's Friday night, date night, and two women are getting ready to head out. But it isn't them who Luka - lawyer, thirty-three - is coming to meet. It's Poppy, an angelic blonde who has been dead for more than a year.
Behind her profile are two morticians, Gertie and Tabitha. By day they pump the blood out of bodies, replacing it with formaldehyde, water, alcohol, and raspberry-coloured dye. They sculpt, sew, and paint on shades of Light Natural Tan and Warm Rose Bisque makeup until a face that is almost too perfect looks out of an open casket. They take their work very seriously, and treat their targets on the dating apps with the same scrupulous care. But as they swipe their way through Luka, Zeke, Joshua and Angus, their carefully constructed routine begins to fray.
In The Thornbacks, bodies are objects of care and of violence, tools to coerce and control. As the two women work on bodies laid on the slab, and perched at the bar, we are left to ask: to what extent can we really shape our own lives? What does justice look like in a world of flesh, deception and desire? And how can humanity's bycatch - its most overlooked, undervalued specimens - find a means to rebel?
Told with a blistering wit, The Thornbacks is an exhilarating, acutely observed story of appearances and their subversion.
