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A Novel
by Katya Balen
Book Reviewed by:When her life is unexpectedly upended, Anna escapes London – and her husband – for a remote cottage in the wetlands of rural England.
She hopes the solitude might unblock the novel she can't bring herself to write.
Out in the marshes, the locals discover something shocking, risen to the surface after many years buried in the silty earth. Anna is drawn to the site, fascinated and shaken by what she finds there. And as researchers descend, her curiosity gives way to obsession ...
An unsettling, propulsive and fiercely tender novel about buried loss and renewal, Our Numbered Bones explores how we must unearth the past in order to make peace with what we've lost.
Chapter One
YESTERDAY I WANDERED THE ENDLESS AISLES IN the Surrey Quays Decathlon and I pretended to be someone else. I folded away the last few months and what I should have been doing and what I should have been buying. I focused on the bright bones of my knuckles as I gripped the trolley. I thought about what sort of person would buy walking gear. Someone who touches the tips of flowers and feels the softness of their petals. Someone who feels a connection to the whole world and marvels at the beauty of a snowflake. That person. I stood under the strip lighting and I closed my eyes and I tried to think about finding joy walking through a meadow or a wood or up a mountain. The hollow thump of basketballs skidding from a rack pulled me back to South London. I'd barely been able to imagine the shape of a tree.
I added thermal layers and waterproofs. They lay in the trolley like oily streaks. Shiny puddles. I couldn't afford them. I didn't even need them. But I wanted them. I wanted to ...
When we first meet Anna, she is fixated on death, constantly fantasizing about the myriad ways she could die in any given scenario, romanticizing her own death and the "comfort" it would bring to escape her grief. And yet with the discovery of the bog body, Anna becomes pained by the thought of this historical woman's life being erased... This realization, though subtly handled, also proves to be a pivotal step in Anna's own journey...continued
Full Review
(678 words)
(Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin).
Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room and The Paris Express
A gut-punch of a novel, as honest as it is eloquent. Jessie Burton, New York Times bestselling author of The Miniaturist
Cathartic, bold and ultimately hopeful. A novel with a powerful emotional charge that stayed with me long after I finished it. Katya Balen understands very well how the strange resides in the everyday, how the dark intermingles with the light - but above all, how accepting the difficult archaeologies of our past can offer restitution, and a hope that will not fade.Katya Balen's novel Our Numbered Bones centers around the discovery of an ancient, fossilized corpse in a peat bog in rural England. These so-called "bog bodies" have been found throughout the world, particularly in Northern Europe, and offer invaluable insight into life and death thousands of years ago. The discovery of a bog body captivates archaeologists, anthropologists, and biologists alike. But authors, like Balen, have also been inspired to explore through fiction precisely why these bodies fascinate us so much, and what their excavation can teach us about society both past and present. Below is a selection of other novels that revolve around the discovery of bog bodies.
Bog Queen (2025) by Anna North
Forensic anthropologist ...
If you liked Our Numbered Bones, try these:
by Anna North
Published 2026
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Outlawed, the gripping story of an anthropologist's monumental discovery and the clash of civilizations it sets off over the fate of the land that holds us.
Orange World and Other Stories
by Karen Russell
Published 2020
A stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell's extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination.
by Sarah Moss
Published 2019
A taut, gripping tale of a young woman and an Iron Age reenactment trip that unearths frightening behavior.
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