To Rest Our Minds and Bodies

In her final year of a degree in psychology, and struggling to relate to the world around her and find her place within it, a young woman drifts from lectures on gifts, vision, the history of global warming, and study groups discussing babies manipulating objects. Yet nothing seems to bring her closer to the great insight she's been promised - except, perhaps, for her budding interest in a fellow student named Luke, a postgraduate in computer sciences, with whom a series of seemingly mundane encounters provides her with a hint of what she might be looking for - a hidden meaning to all that surrounds her. But a chasm between them that grows and shrinks unexpectedly calls into question whether he might be as incomprehensible as the world around her. She yearns, and continues to endeavour to shape her experiences and environment - a Louise Bourgeois exhibition, the underwhelming men she meets on Tinder, a Mitski song, the dreams she has of Luke's ex-girlfriend - she narrates all as she grapples with questions of embodiment and subjectivity.

Set in an unnamed campus in England in the early 2020s, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies queries the nature of one's experience, mapping the disintegration of a young woman's sense of self and her struggle to keep a grip on reality. From a voice as unique as it is relatable, and in prose that is keenly observant, delightfully wry, and utterly despairing, the anonymous narrator of this unconventional coming-of-age novel is as brave as she is unforgettable.

'A work of art. Armstrong's prose has that meticulous and urgent quality reminiscent of Beckett and Duras, achieving the same uncanny shared consciousness that keeps you hooked from the first sentence... It charts some deep and dark territories we all know but barely acknowledge. It cuts through the platitudes of love and life in a way most writers wouldn't dare.' - Luke Kennard, author of Notes on the Sonnets

'There is great skill and craft involved in the construction of a voice which feels simultaneously as alive and deliberate... Harriet Armstrong is unafraid to look honestly at sex, love and humiliation and consequently has written a book which is somehow both confronting and warm.'-Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City

'An assertive and captivating novel, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies is a poignant portrait of the uncertain state of being alive.' - Rebecca Watson, author of I Will Crash

'The rarest debut... a must read, a new immediate classic, a heart-wrenching work of fiction that for once tells the real truth about being young, ravenous, desperate, too big for the container of the body of youth.... This novel is written in gold - every line is marvellous and perfect. I can't believe this novel exists.' - Luke Goebel, author of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours

'A novel of humiliations and revelations where heartbreak gets logged in a spreadsheet. Harriet Armstrong has a singular voice, writing girlhood like a field study - obsessive, precise, and unexpectedly tender.'- Madeline Cash, author of Earth Angel

'There is something so beautifully gentle, humane and optimistic about the writing, that is uplifting despite the sadness of the plot. There is a real sense of freedom in the prose - an openness, a plasticity, a suppleness. This is ultimately unflinching and brave prose.' - SJ Naude, author of The Alphabet of Birds

'A devastating page-turner of an impossible love story, with insight and surprise on every page. Reading this felt like being given pure, clean glasses after wearing really stressfully and depressingly dirty glasses for many years.'- Adelaide Faith, author of Happiness Forever

'An astonishingly poised, absorbing debut. It combines conceptual erudition with an attention to the body, sexuality and the cadences of everyday life in a voice that is both sophisticated and winningly uncynical.'- Alice Blackhurst, author of Luxury, Sensation and the Moving Image

Harriet Armstrong was born and raised in Oxford. She has had short stories published in Confingo Magazine, The Georgia Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Giramondo's HEAT literary magazine and Forever Magazine. In Autumn 2024, aged twenty-four, she was a Resident at the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation for Literature and the Arts. She lives and works in London. To Rest Our Minds and Bodies is her first novel.