Our Numbered Bones

by Katya Balen

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.

Genres: Contemporary, Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication February 17, 2026

About the author

Katya Balen is a British author of children's literature. She was born in 1989, in London. Her novel October, October won the 2022 Carnegie Medal. Her work has also been nominated for the Branford Boase Award and the Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation.

Reviews

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katya Balen is a phenomenal writer and over the last few years has captivated younger readers( and adults) with her magical, sometimes ethereal, moving and sensitive tales of young lives going through periods of challenge and transition.

Our Numbered Bones is her debut adult novel and it is certainly worthy of attention.

Anna's life has been over turned by a personal tragedy and she cannot breathe under the pressure of the expectation of writing a new. novel and the over-powering care and love from her husband. She is offered the chance to stay in a remote cottage with the goal of starting her new book- change to escape and breathe..

But a chance encounter whilst walking leads Anna her to the discovery of a body taking her life into an unexpected direction- the body of a young woman from centuries ago has been exposed within the bogland of the area- still preserved. A deep connection between the discovered corpse and Anna is opened - leading her to an obsession that pulls apart the fragile existence that Anna has created to survive

This is a novel that is so raw and simultaneously tender. Katya Balen's prose is at times minimal- stripped bare but so powerful - and sections are intermittently written in poetic form which add an extra depth and beauty- especially in relation to Anna's connection with the discovered young woman. Linking the personal trauma of Anna and the violence of corpse's demise- this is a story of loss and finding the peace to move forward.

Let's hope this is the start of Katya Balen's adult fiction writing ( but don't stop the writing for younger readers)

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel can certainly count amongst one of the most visceral novels I have read. Whilst the spine of the story is clear - distressed and damaged author goes to a writing retreat attempting to meet extended deadline for her second book.

She is traumatised, the reasons growing ever clearer as the narrative of our protagonist, Anna, progresses/dissolves/emerges. The language pulls us in and out of episodic staccato poetry heaped by caesuras emphasising her broken-ness and her submersion. Often shifts in writing style can interrupt the reader but I found they truly pulled me in.

A nearby archaeological discovery, and the team working on the find, prove the catalyst for Anna.

This novel echoes many books I have encountered yet in a totally unique immersive way. Although themed differently I am thinking "Soldier, Sailor" by Claire Kilroy and "Ghost Wall" by Sarah Moss.

Staggeringly,painfully good

With thanks to #NetGalley and #Canongate for the opportunity to read and review

[em · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and raw story about grief, womanhood and motherhood. The writing in this felt tender, similar to the body found in the bog. I felt that if I breathed too heavy the words would melt away. This was refreshing and heavy to read, a really fantastic experience and example of literature being a transformative experience. Stunning.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for kindly providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. #OurNumberedBones #NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every now and then a book creeps up on me, and hits hard. I’d picked this up in proof form at my local literature festival, six months before it was due out, and having heard the author speak and read from it, and respecting Canongate as a publisher of literary fiction, it made its way into the to-read pile. Anna, the novel’s traumatised (by what is unclear at the outset, and slowly unfurls, until it quickly unfurls) central figure, escapes London, home, hubby, cat, and a deadline to retreat to the Fens – Norfolk, maybe, or Lincolnshire – to write, to engage at least with the deadline.

Soon after arriving, in the marshes, the Fens, a body comes to the surface, quickly revealed to the more of archaeological interest than relevant to the police – marshes having preserved the body well – Anna finds herself drawn into the archaeologists’ circle, supporting the dig at the insistence of the group’s middle aged leader. It is here that Anna begins to feel an affinity with the Bronze Age corpse, and her control of her trauma and grief begins to crumble as she collapses into a profound state of loss and the beginning of restoration.

The upshot is a tale of loss, of grief, of trauma told through Balen’s sparse text, which despite its intense control also manages to be both poetic and poetry – the corpse speaks in verse forms – evoking Anna’s sense of profound loss and despair that comes with it. It’s hard to write too much without giving it all away; it seems important that all the core characters – Anna and archaeologists – are outsiders in the small community and that no-one else seems all that interested in their ancient well-preserved corpse, which seems to intrude into established ways of being and disrupt them – except in the place she is. That is to say, this is very much a story of outsiders intruding but not really engaging: in this Balen has built a multiply layered story of absence and alienation, perfect for Anna’s circumstances, but a place that no longer works as her restoration grows.

Evoking both loss and quest, building around a central bereft character Our Numbered Bones draws out a sense of place and mindset, of recovery and restoration, through a recognition across the eons to be a gorgeous suckerpunch, and all the more beautiful for it.

[Scott Baxter]

Our Numbered Bones is a story about a writer living in London named Anna Mendelson. Anna is supposed to be working on her next novel, but is having a hard time concentrating on her work, partly because she is also caring for her aging mother with dementia. Her agent is aware that things are not going well.

“My editor found the retreat for me when yet another deadline slipped by and I’d stopped lying about delivering the manuscript in a few weeks. She emailed the link and there was a line about understanding my difficult circumstances but she’d bolded the new delivery date. Her thoughts were with me” (location 162).

While at the retreat Anna comes across a woman’s dead body. Let me just pause for a moment and say that there is quite a bit of grief and trauma in this book.

Here is the narrator's description of her attempt to make progress on her manuscript at the retreat:

“I am not connecting with nature. I haven’t found joy in a leaf. I haven’t thought of the perfect way to describe a cloud. I haven’t stumbled across my novel. Of course I haven’t. I am stuck. Still” (location 476).

The publisher tells me that this book is literary fiction. At least in my opinion, one of the necessary but not sufficient characteristics for this genre of novel is well crafted sentences that impress. I am not sure about this part.

Katya Balen has previously published at least seven books for children; Our Numbered Bones is her first adult novel. I found a copy of her first book, The Space We’re In, and found a lot more humor and heart in just the first few pages of that book. I would like to read more of that book.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of this book via Net Galley. All opinions are my own.

epub. 256 pgs. Scheduled for publication 17 February 2026. Finished 27 August 2025.

[Marie Pouwels · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say I read this book with bad intentions. We received a proof copy in the shop I work in. I did not like the front cover, did not like the back cover, hated the layout of some pages. I read the synopsis and thought the author must have some nerves to basically write a lame modern version of "Blood On Her Tongue". After seeing there was no review here yet I thought it'd be a great opportunity for me to write a nasty one.
I started reading and that was so easy to read I had to hold myself back so I wouldn't finish it in less than a day. Turns out I am really glad I read it. I am still not 100% sold on the layout of Anna's writing and she should really see a mental health professional but in the end everything makes sense, it's very raw, very intense and heartbreaking.
I hope everyone likes it as much as I did. Maybe I should pick out more books to read out of spite.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

He reads the Booker Prize shortlist every year and I feel like a fraud. He is earnest. He wants my opinion on this year’s winner. He loved it. He could see why other people didn’t. I tell him I haven’t read it. That I’m catching up on my reading pile. I know that feeling he says. He tells me he read my first novel. This never happens. We talk about authorial intent and experimental structures and unlikeable protagonists and I quietly realise he is not talking about my book at all. After a while he realises too. We don’t say anything. We politely finish the discussion and he turns away to talk to Tom. But of course says Jen as she drains her wine glass. You must write about her. For a second I am caught frozen in her words and I think I can’t And I am pulled under with panic and horror at the thought of shaping that And then the waves crash around us again and I understand. Yes I think. I could try that, couldn’t I?

 
Katya Balen is a well known children’s author – whose second children’s book “October, October” won the Carnagie Prize (the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing – for which her first book was longlisted and her third shortlisted).
 
This is her adult debut. 
 
On her website she says about her children’s writing that “I love writing stories about bold, brave, wild children who connect with nature and with each other. I find inspiration in landscapes” – she also warns about this novel that “if you’re one of my brilliant child readers then this one isn’t for you!”
 
And not only is this not a book suitable for children (for no reason other than the adult concerns it addresses) but its first party protagonist Anna – herself a published author (of one novel – a quite imagined character study of the women in TS Eliot’s “The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock”) - when we first meet her is feeling far from bold and brave and is almost comically (if we did not immediately sense the loss and sadness that permeates her thoughts and feelings) ill-equipped for connection with nature: in fact we meet her she is wandering the stores of a sport shop trying to but equipment for a writing retreat in a remote cottage in the rural Wetlands – a retreat she is reluctant to embrace despite the encouragement of her agent and her French partner JP. 
 
Anna is suffering writers block but we quickly sense that there is a deeper emotional issue – not just the loss of her father many years ago, or her mother’s current early onset but now advanced dementia, but something else which gradually undfolds over time admits references to hospitals and to a box.
 
At the cottage (where in something of a running joke one of the previous writer retreat-ees appears to have been Cressida Cowell – replete with references to dragons and films) she drifts uneasily until stumbling across a body discovered in the surrounding boglands, then finding herself drawn to a group of archaeologists who are called in by the police and discover it’s a 3000 year old but bog-preserved body of a woman. 
 
The archeologists (who amusingly includes someone who to people’s astonishment reads the Booker shortlist each year  - to which my reaction was slacker who about reading the longlist and twice) are lead by the charismatic figure of Jen who is herself drawn to recovering bodies of ancient women (particularly if they were the victims of violence) and who quietly encourages Ana to be open to her own connections and links to the woman they have discovered – and to use them as the basis for the novel for which she is desperately seeking inspiration.
 
And this is a journey which causes Anna to reexamine her relationship with her mother, the incident that has impacted her recently and her relationship with JP – both in the days and in vivid dreams (clearly impacted by the events of each day). 
 
Fragmentary sections scattered through the novel appear to represent the thoughts of the buried woman – perhaps before her death, at times seeming like they are in the present day as she is bought back to the surface, and possibly but not definitely from Anna’s imaginations and this gives the book a cleverly elusive feel as we try to sense both their meaning and what has happened to bring Anna to where she is now.
 

There is old life 
and new death
in this soft dark
now
stories
and soil 
change
and stay
the same
moment
to moment
The shift of water and the swell of water under sunlight
and oh
the echo of
a small hand
that small hand 
in mine
holding 
tight
in this moment
in all moments
the earth move
still

 
To say much more would be to spoil a novel which itself relies – like archaeological digs – on painstaking and gentle extraction and uncovering, but one which was for me beautifully handled.
 
Recommended.
 
My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley
 

You know what Stephen King says? says Hugo and I brace myself. Stories are artefacts. Found things, like fossils in the ground. Relics. Part of an undiscovered, pre-existing world. I might have got that a bit wrong. I can always remember part of something, never the whole. It’s a cu

[Divya Shankar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating 4.5 stars
Review - Katya Balen, a Carnegie medal winner, is a much loved author of children’s fiction. Our Numbered Bones is her debut adult novel. Anna Mendelson, the book’s protagonist, in a bid to escape her life in London, a past puckered with guilt, loss, grief, trauma moves to a quaint cottage in the rural wetlands. Her editor suggests the change of place hoping she can get over writer's block and complete her novel. But when locals discover a woman's body that's risen to the surface in the bogs, Anna’s curiosity to know about the dead woman turns into an obsession. It pushes her to confront her past head on rather than run away from it. A group of archaeologists are out to investigate for the dead woman is a relic from a bygone era carefully preserved under marsh, not a victim of some recent crime. Who is the dead woman, why does Anna feel she knows her? The earth is alive with dead, alive with stories; as both are exhumed, Anna finds a closure for a past that’s been haunting her.

Having read the author's books for children - Nightjar, Little House and Birdsong and finding comfort and joy in her bright and beautiful, crisp and hopeful world of words, it really took me time to accept the unsettling and triggering environs of this novel. Short chapters, a mix of prose and verse, bursts of razor sharp sentences, the protagonist’s obsession with death, her wallowing in depression and refusal to accept affection and care- for a good first half of the novel, I yearned for the author I was familiar with, even as I was glad that she adopted different strategies in writing for children and adults. Archaeologists - Jen and Lilly are firm feminists are favorite characters apart from Anna’s extremely supportive husband JP (Men like him are easier to find in fiction than in real life). The denouement strongly reminded me of the Hindi movie Talaash starring Aamir Khan. Our Numbered Bones is a near-perfect novel that clearly conveys the message - that one has to make peace with one's past to thrive in the present.
Thank you Netgalley and Canongate books for the ARC.

[Paul Wagenbreth · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.”

[Kimberley · Rating 3 out of 5]

We meet Anna as she’s leaving for a small cottage, located in a small village, far outside of London. Her editor wants her to finish a long overdue second book—a book Anna hasn’t even begun—and feels a change of scenery will be helpful.

Anna isn’t so sure.

Once there, Anna decides to familiarize herself with her surroundings—seeking inspiration—by exploring the vast bog. It isn’t long before she happens upon the unearthed body of a long dead woman.

Anna develops an intense connection to the body, although she has no clue as to why, and the events surrounding the body’s discovery becomes the catalyst for unearthing Anna’s own painful story.

Grief, loss, trauma, abuse, and motherhood are all major themes and it’s clear we’re meant to have our epiphany about Anna at roughly the same time she begins to figure everything out for herself.

Anna’s journey is a painful one and a lot of this was hard to read. Especially since many of Anna’s thoughts came across as disturbingly distorted. Borderline insane, to be honest.

In the end, the buildup to discovering what happened was interesting enough. Jen, the intuitive archaeologist was a lovely character; I enjoyed the insight she brought.

Overall, a good book but definitely one that left me feeling a bit squeamish here and there.

[Ben Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our Numbered Bones by the latest novel by Katya Balen and one which begins simply - a woman leaving a city, travelling to the countryside. Yet immediately the sense of unease grows, and a journey slowly turns into an obsession - and the reasons for the journey becomes clear.

Katya Balen has written a very beautiful, haunting novel - a mix of prose and poetry fill its short chapters - and it is a novel that from its simple beginnings becomes truly unsettling as it nears its end. It is fully engaging, with a very well drawn central character in Anna. The brevity of its chapters meant I whizzed through this novel in one sitting, breathless by its end. This is highly recommended and I'm very keen to see what Balen does next.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

[Farah G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes, a radical change in life circumstances can bring in its wake radical changes in behaviour. As Anna, who finds herself alone after the breakdown of her marriage, the undertaking a move to a remote part of the country, and the struggle to write her novel, soon discovers...

The discovery of bones in the wetlands adjacent to where she now lives becomes a consuming preoccupation for her. But how healthy is this borderline obsessive behaviour?

Katya Balen brings her considerable gifts as a writer to this adult story, giving her regular readers something that is very different but interesting in this new book.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

[Polly Jenefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was devastating... my favourite kind of book! The last 15% had be sobbing and then immediately calling my mum to tell her I love her 💜

This won't be for everyone as has major themes of grief, loss, trauma, mental health and motherhood so please check trigger warnings.

We're in Anna's POV throughout which is intense to say the least but understandable the more we learn about her and tbh at times very relatable. I loved the magic realism sprinkled in and all our characters felt real and central to the plot which I really appreciated.

Thank you NetGalley and Canongate Books for allowing me to read the ARC for an honest review, will definitely be keeping an eye out for future works by the author!

[Danni · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[kearstin · Rating 4 out of 5]

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!

[J R · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, haunting novel about grief, love, motherhood and very beautifully and poetically written. Balen knows how to tell a story, slowly revealing what actually happened building suspense along the way. Raw, moving, intense and highly recommended!
Thank you Canongate and Netgalley UK for the ARC.