Catherine Simpson
Catherine Simpson is a novelist and memoir writer based in Edinburgh. Her memoir One Body was published by Saraband in 2022 and was selected for World Book Night in 2023 and shortlisted in the Scottish Book Awards. This followed her 2019 memoir When I Had a Little Sister which was published to great critical acclaim: โsuperbโ (Sunday Times) โrivetingโ (Observer). Her debut novel Truestory was published in 2015 and won her a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland.
Read an extract
World Book Night Audiobook Selection 2023
โA deep and soulful meditation on what it means to be a woman โฆ powerful.โ Sunday Times
โAn often shocking reminder of the insidious sexism at large โฆ lucid and warm.โ Times Literary Supplement
โIt packs the wallop of a wrecking ball but reads as easily as a page-turner.โ The List
By the time she reached her fifties, Catherine Simpson and her body had gone through a lot together โ from period pain, an abortion and early menopause to shaming and harassment. But there had been success, joy, love and laughter too: far more freedoms than her mother had, a fulfilling family life and career, and the promise of more gains for her daughters. So when a cancer diagnosis upends her life, Catherine is forced to reflect on her body, then and now. From having been brought up on a farm where vets were more common than doctors, and where illness was โa nuisanceโ, she finds herself faced with the nuisance of a lifetime.
One Body is the candid, searing and often darkly funny story of how Catherine navigates her treatment and takes stock of the emotions and reflections it provokes, until her cancer is in remission. And how she comes to appreciate the skin she is in โ to be grateful for her body and all that it does and is.
From the author of When I Had a Little Sister:
โA poignant memoirโฆseeks to find a way to address the unspoken. Simpson is a precise and skilled writer. This memoirโฆis a considerable achievement.โย Cathy Rentzenbrink,ย The Times
โRiveting and bleakly funnyโฆheartrendingโฆ compassionate and beadily observed.โย Observer
โA superb memoir.โย Sunday Times
โI found this book gripping and heart-wrenching. It sticks with me still.โย Mail on Sunday
Prizes and awards
SHORTLISTED Non-Fiction Book of the Year at Scotland's Book of the Year from the Saltire Society
REVIEWS OF One Body
โA memoir that is not only a journey through the bleak, blasted wasteland of cancer but a deep and soulful meditation on what it means to be a woman.โ Sunday Times
"I love Catherine Simpsonโs work โฆ One Body is โฆ the story of what it is like to exist in a womanโs body. Itโs fresh, insightful and moving, and itโs a book that every man should read." Graeme Macrae Burnet
โFunny, bold, wry and, at times, enraging in the best possible way, this exploration โฆ has an incredible energising quality โฆ imbued with spirit and a real passion for life.โ Mary Paulson-Ellis
โBy turns poignant and searingly honest, this book is a wise and witty reflection on all that it means to have a body.โ Claire Askew
โA vivid framing of the mystery, confusion and even terror tangled up with our young bodies in the โ70s.โ Mary Anne Hobbs
โA joyful, angry, beautiful air-punch of a book, and so truthful โ I felt as though each word was written on my own body.โ Kirstin Innes
โSimpson movingly recounts her experience with breast cancer in this exquisite memoir โฆ by turns witty and frank โฆ Itโs this candor that makes Simpsonโs narrative shine.โ (Sept.) Publishers Weekly
โA cracking read.โ Janice Forsyth, BBC Scotland
โIt packs the wallop of a wrecking ball but reads as easily as a page-turner.โ Lucy Ribchester, The List
โBrave and bold โฆ written with unflinching honesty.โ Lancashire Evening Post
โSimpson reveals โ in an often hilarious book โ how she confronted her devastating diagnosis, and how it made her love her body again.โ Mail on Sunday
โShe explores the idea that functionality is connected to an individualโs worth with grace and dark humour.โ Irish Times
โAs social history, One Body is an often shocking reminder of the insidious sexism at large in the culture โฆ Simpson is a lucid and warm survivor.โ Times Literary Supplement
โA deep and soulful meditation on what it means to be a woman โฆ powerful insight into โฆ living through the unenlightened attitudes of the Seventies and Eighties.โ Sunday Times
