Our Numbered Bones is a a beautiful meditation on grief, moving on after tragedy, and how we are all connected throughout history. Katya Balen wove together compelling narratives for modern day and (even though we didn't get a lot of it) the Iron Age.

Our Numbered Bones isn't the type of book I would usually pick up, but I'm very glad I did.

i finished weeks ago and i’m still thinking about the atmosphere. i knew katya balen from her children's books (which are lovely), but our numbered bones is such a confident and haunting adult debut.

the premise immediately grabbed me: anna, a grieving writer, heads to a remote retreat in rural england to escape her mother’s dementia and her own writer's block, only to become obsessed with an ancient body found preserved in the wetlands.

what i loved about this book is the atmospheric writing. the author's background in children's lit shines through in the best way; the prose is lyrical and accessible, not overly dense. you can practically feel the damp cold of the fens and the mud on your boots. it’s incredibly grounded in nature. second thing i adored was the parallel narratives. i’m a sucker for "past meets present" stories. the way anna’s internal processing of her trauma mirrors the excavation of the bog body was beautifully done. it didn't feel gimmicky; it felt like a genuine exploration of how we dig up our own ghosts.

most important thing that got me was the portrayal of grief; anna’s anxiety and the claustrophobia of being stuck in a cottage with her own thoughts felt very real. it was so relatable.

why 4 stars?? it is very introspective. because anna is isolated for much of the book, you spend a lot of time in her head. it’s beautiful, but at times i wanted the pacing to pick up just a little bit. however, the ending brought it all together in a way that felt earned and cathartic.

if you like books like the essex serpent or stories where the landscape is just as important as the characters, pick this up. it’s a sad, tender, and ultimately hopeful story about what we preserve and what we let go.

4.5 ❤️⭐️

thank you so much HarperVia for this arc. it was such a beautiful read.

This book has everything that I love in a novel. Balen writes such an amazing adult debut that explores grief, trauma, and womanhood in such an interesting way. I will think about this book for a long, long, long time. The language is absolutely stunning, which I noticed from the first page. I can't wait to read a physical copy of this when it's published.

A stunning novel depicting grief and womanhood. Katya Balen did a phenomenal job weaving tenderness into such heavy themes. Anna was a beautiful character to follow, and her growth throughout the story was wonderful.

This was a great read, and I look forward to purchasing this once it’s been published.

Thank you to the publisher, HarperVia, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

A writer struggling with her work and the stillbirth of her child goes on a remote writing retreat, hoping that solitude will spur her imagination. What she finds is radically different: the body of a woman in a bog. When a team of archaeologists descends, she's caught up in their excavation, and begins to process her own trauma and emotions by imagining and dreaming of the possible life of the bog woman. She becomes friends with the scientists, builds new relationships, and begins to find her way forward. Beautifully-written, evocative, and full of characters who feel very real, Our Numbered Bones is a pleasure to read, moving and thought-provoking.

impressively gorgeous viscerally effective book with a super unique style to its prose throughout. would recommend this one. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

Stories are not so much creations, Stephen King asserted in his meditation on craft, “On Writing,” as they are “found things, like fossils in the ground,” a notion that gets physical substance as well as express character articulation in Katya Balen’s “Our Numbered Bones,” in which the remains of a thousands-of-years-old woman have somehow made their way to the surface of a bog in rural England.
“She came up for something. … why would she push herself up if she wasn’t trying to find something?” the on-site chief archaeologist remarks, adding elements of mystery or even perhaps the supernatural to Balen’s already beguiling story of a blocked writer who has taken to a remote cottage in an attempt to rekindle her writing and happened upon the discovery.
Saying more would give away too much other than to say that the discovery of the corpse, particularly after it’s found that her throat had been cut, proves especially traumatic for the author, who finds in the discovery reverberations of a recent devastating event in her own life.
Enthralling enough a story it was for me, Balen’s debut adult novel, that I finished the book in an afternoon, my appreciation enhanced by lyrical, even at times poetic prose which, together with the absorbing story, made for a reading experience remindful of such notable literary works as Julian Barnes’ “Flaubert’s Parrot, “ Graham Swift’s “Waterland,” or perhaps most apposite here, Vendela Vida’s “The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty.”