Corpsing: My Body and Other Horror Shows

by Sophie White

Nora Ephron meets Bram Stoker in Sophie White's vivid and ambitious literary non-fiction collection. White asks uncomfortable questions about the lived reality of womanhood in the 21st century, and the fear that must be internalised in order to find your path through it. White balances vivid storytelling with sharp-witted observations about the horrors of grief, mental illness, and the casual and sometimes hilarious cruelty of life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Feminism, Irish Literature, Mental Health, Biography Memoir

308 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2021

About the author

Sophie White is an Irish author, journalist and podcaster. She is the co-host of the podcasts Mother of Pod and The Creep Dive.

Reviews

[ThatBookish_deviant · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 ⭐️

“We are obsessed with the before and After of Women. It’s always implied that there is a destination to reach, a state of perfection to achieve before our lives can commence.”

A fiercely honest, raw collection of essays on womanhood. Sophie White lays all her cards on the table, revealing all the ugly, beautiful moments most of us keep locked behind closed doors. I love the audacity of her.

“Consuming and being subsumed: it’s an exhausting occupation. Enough will always be a difficult concept for me.”

I became an insta-fan after reading White’s novel, Where I End, while Corpsing just sat on my shelf, unread, for years. I regret not picking it up sooner, especially after dealing with the death of loved ones. White’s essays on grief are so relatable and wonderfully cathartic. She also covers motherhood, eating disorders, addiction, and mental health struggles.

“the blank emptiness of delayed grief…a stoicism that verges on the pathological…”

[segosha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting topics but found the writing, on a sentence level, quite repetitive and almost redundant. I think it was a little muddy, and while the individual essays were in conversation in each other, they also talked over each other.

[Sinéad Cuddihy · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the minute I started reading I thought, 'how on earth will I review this book and do it justice?!'

Corpsing is a collection of essays by writer and podcaster, Sophie White, detailing the literal highs and lows of life, death, addiction, mental illness, motherhood, womanhood.

It seems trite and clichéd to say I laughed, I cried, but I laughed, I cried. I’ve had to stop and google ’The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan’, pause to listen with eyes closed to Blue by Joni Mitchell, and I can’t look at the Saxa salt the same way ever again.

Looking at my notes, I’ve written honest, beautiful, relatable, raw, emotional, heartbreaking and funny. It is all of those things and more. Get it, read it, pass it on.

[Lisa - *OwlBeSatReading* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Corpsing by Sophie White is a collection of brave, brutally honest, & mostly sad, but on occasion, funny, essays.

From pregnancy, *vampirism & motherhood, to death & addiction, high-functioning alcoholic, Sophie, writes of living with mental illness

*yes, really!

How could this book deserve any less than 5 stars when Sophie has willingly laid bare what’s going on in her head to help ease her pain, and in turn, ease the pain of those who chose to read this.

An essential read for anyone who’s dealing/dealt with/lives with others with mental health issues.

[Stella]

I didn’t feel right giving this a star rating as it’s so deeply personal for the author. The first essay really dragged me in but I wasn’t so sure about the rest, up until the last one. An interesting read

[Aoife Cassidy McM · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult one to review. A series of essays on grief, motherhood, addiction and mental illness, it makes for illuminating, stark and very sad reading at times.

Throughout, I thought the writing was at its best when the author discussed her grief for her father and her alcoholism. There are a couple of really standout essays in there - most notably in Part I.

The book drifted a bit for me from this point, with quite a bit of overlap and repetition, and social commentary that I found a bit jarring. It pulled me back in with “Drunk Mother”, which is brutal in its honesty.

The last essay surprised me a little and made me feel there were some things left unsaid. Overall, a well written collection. 3/5 ⭐️

[Mary O]

I really wanted to love this book, yes it is honest, I felt that it was at times more on the side of cringe then anything else. I felt like it was a diary of how to be authenic but it just felt fake.

[Breige · Rating 5 out of 5]

Corpsing by Sophie White has been sitting on my shelf since it was released (I even preordered it) and I’ve only picked it up now. I’m not sure why, possibly because there’s been so many fantastic reviews but I’ve previously read Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown & loved it (it was my first book featured on this account!) so I’m unsure what the hesitation was. Anyway, better late than never!

Sophie is incredibly honest when it comes to her life: mental health, alcoholism, motherhood, her father’s early onset Alzheimer’s before his passing away are just some of the hard hitting issues she talks about frankly

If you’re wondering about the title, corpsing is used on stage when an actor breaks character. In the book, Sophie uses it to describe moments her drinking addiction when start to show, when she wasn’t able to control it and hide it under a veneer of normality

I loved the way she wrote, at times it feels like she’s speaking to you like you’re a close friend, right down to admitting having a craving for blood. At times it does veer a little weird like this but because it’s so honest & has a touch of humour, it never feels too weird. Like I said, it’s those crazy conversations you only have with close friends!

Dark, brutally honest and incredibly emotional, it’s clear to say the book lived up to the hype for me

CW: addiction, mental health, self harm, sexual assault, death, grief, Alzheimer’s

[Sine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right now it's easy to feel like we are floating through a weird life. Nothing to really talk about. This book makes me feel awake alive and weirdly optimistic. I've read the first few stories in one hungry sitting. I'm properly hooked and can't wait to read more. Marian keyes summed it perfectly. "It's extraordinary. Painful, powerful visceral and spiritual. A remarkable book" I also already see it is bursting with love too.

[Edel Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful collection of essays that deal with White’s personal experiences of grief, mental illness and motherhood. At times some of the essays are so emotionally raw you feel you are trespassing in her brain even reading them. I have never read anything so honest - she describes pain so perfectly. Drunk Mother, Smotherhood and Bad Timings II made a massive impact on me. An unforgettable read.

[James Durkan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My third Sophie White this year. Love picking up any of her work as they are all so different. I saw her at the Kildare Reader’s Festival and got my copy signed.

What to say to give this justice. Sophie writes so raw and candidly on her experiences with grief, addiction, mental illness, being a mother, and womanhood. There were essays that made me laugh, made me cry, made me put the book down for a moment, and also say wtf did I just read.

A challenging read, but so very worthwhile. Life is a journey, and many facets we must face.

[Magdarine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little repetitive in tone but very honest.

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved half of this book and really didn’t enjoy the other half. I found the first section almost barbaric and unbelievably uncomfortable - and the story about cravings, stomach churning.

The rest was enthralling and well written. I felt huge empathy for her particularly the stories of motherhood.

[Marline Abellar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corpsing is a refreshingly honest book of essays that has just further ingrained in me that my number one fear – above dying alone, above losing my memories – is, and always will be, motherhood. The first essay in which White contrasts the slow death of her father with the very visceral and stomach-churning descriptions of the birth of her son (I am not yet at the point in my life wherein I am able to see and appreciate the “beauty of childbirth” and honestly, reading through this book made me really wonder if I ever would be) almost sent me running for the hills, but I’m glad I stuck it out because this is a book about what it means to be a woman, a mentally-ill woman, an alcoholic woman, a grieving woman, a fat woman, and all other facets of womanhood in between.

The wonderful thing about Corpsing is how utterly relatable White can be, or at least, so raw and vulnerable that as a reader you feel as though you’re wandering through someone else’s brain, their soul, and you are more than welcome to be there. Even though there wasn’t much I could personally relate to, on a surface level, in White’s memoirs, I still found them engaging and oddly, they forced me to consider aspects of myself I took for granted on a fundamental level. I do not have children. I do not want children. And why is that? Here in White’s essays I felt vindicated for the first time being a young woman who did not see the ultimate fulfillment of my human potential in popping out helpless, squalling little beings into a great unknown world, no, White’s depiction of motherhood (particularly in the essay “Milk (and Madness)”) exposes motherhood for what it really is. It’s hard. It’s unforgiving. It’s creating a life that will forever be tied to you, smothering you, feeding from you. And worst of all, is the way in which our society markets motherhood, as beatific bliss, as radiance and peace. White explores the concept of the “monstrous mother”, lamenting the taboo nature of openly discussing mothers “worn down by the demands placed on her or suffering from mental illness” that we as a society have only ever really breached the subject through monstrous representations of motherhood in horror films. It was an interesting point, one I had never really had cause to think of, but now that it’s been said I can’t help but notice it so clearly: “When a villain or ghostly entity is revealed to be a mother there is no more potent, unthinkable animal fear. We, the audience are forced to re-encounter the helplessness and confusion of childhood when our mothers were the universe. A mother gone wrong is the purest terror because her power over the child is infinite. Against such a woman, such a thing, there can be no defence” (263) – it’s caused great amounts of self-introspection. Perhaps it isn’t simply the body horror of growing another living being inside of your body, feeling it move and kick from within, that’s kept me away from the pleasingly-packaged socially approved depictions of motherhood in most films and media – it’s the fear of failure. Of being a bad mom. Of being incapable of keeping up with the burdens of child-rearing, having a career, staying fit and active and mentally sound, and everything else lauded on women who can, and really, “do it all”.

And that’s okay.

Sophie says it’s okay.

And granted, I didn’t know Sophie from Adam before picking up this book, but her honesty and vulnerability throughout makes Corpsing oddly comforting in a way. Basically we’re all a little messed up and we, as people, as a society, should talk about it more.

And speaking of messed up, the essay “Craving”, about White’s vampiristic pregnancy-fueled obsession with blood? Seeking out and ingesting great quantities of blood? Sitting in a bath tub and dousing herself with two litres of pig’s blood? Absolutely delightful! There’s a certain kind of humour White uses to approach her trauma, and maybe that’s why I found the book to be so palatable despite its rather heavy topics. It would be all too easy to simply succumb to grief and pain in recollecting some of the experiences shared in the book, but who would want to read a simple rehashing of misery when instead there’s the story of White and her mother smuggling her father’s ashes across borders in a Saxa salt container? It’s a humour that’s sorely needed as you progress through the collection and into the more disturbing recollections, memories of sexual assault and being a child too young to comprehend the wrong thing that has happened to you, growing into womanhood and still having to come to terms with all of the wrong things in life that come with being a woman, the self-doubt and self-blame when your boundaries are invaded and discarded, knowing for yourself that you’ve done nothing wrong or to be deserving of such treatment and yet…simply put, and as cliché as it may be, if I didn’t laugh while reading some parts of this, I simply would have cried.

Again, it’s an odd sort of collection of essays at times, sometimes a bit repetitive in their themes, but overall the collection reads like a trauma sandwich. It begins with essays largely to do with the death of White’s father, grief, and childbirth before flowing into the meat of the collection, in my humble opinion, the juiciest bits about self-harm, addiction, and some topics seemingly out of left field (such as the essay about vampiristic pregnancy cravings); and is all tied off with brutally raw and honest depictions of what it means to be an alcoholic, and a mother, and the two being irrevocably intertwined.

Hats off to Sophie White, as it takes an extraordinary amount of courage and hutzpah to lay yourself bare like that for all the world to see.

[Mary Quigley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's so difficult to articulate pain, but Sophie White knits it up into a wonderful wonky jumper. This book is so open and vulnerable, cliché as it sounds it's one of the bravest things I've ever read. Mental illness, motherhood, addiction, death, these messy subjects don't often lend themselves to neat description but every word is crafted to perfection so everyone can feel heard in these pages. Much of it will feel all too familiar to many of us, but it is comforting to see it formed into something almost beautiful.

[Sorcha · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is undoubtedly courage and strength seeping through each page of this book, embracing topics of grief and mental illness in a humourous way takes skill which the author clearly has. Unfortunately I felt the tone was in many of the essays rather overbearing, juvenile and repetitive at times. Drunk mother stuck with me, I felt this was the best essay by far.

[Beth O'Riordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brutal honesty and humour served up in a backet of grief and depression. It was one of those books that stays with you however I felt it many of the stories repeated the same sadness and self loathing which got a little bit repetitive for me towards the end.

[Dolly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

I devoured this book and didn't want it to end. Sophie's honest and raw musings about life and motherhood are brave and powerful, and she covers many subjects others may shy from. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

it’s kind of hard to rate someone’s life story but it was incredibly painful to read both in subject matter and style
however there were moments of insight that anyone could reason with i just wish it was executed better

[Claire Kane · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Pain will not be stamped down and neurtralised for an inburst instead of an outburst. If you don't address it, connect with it and accept it, it will become toxic and infect the people you love."

We're great at talking about mental health, but how comfortable are we with talking about mental illness? I think the most important lessons we learn come from things that make us squirm, and Corpsing will make you squirm. This is Sophie White's reality and I've no doubt that if you are living, breathing, consuming human you'll see some of your reality in some of the pages. In this book of incredibly personal essays, Sophie White details her darkest and most private thoughts and moments, smattered with abstract comparisons and her trademark dark humour. The humour is there, isn't it? Or is my humour so dark that I saw humour in places it wasn't meant to be found? I digress. There is bravery and comfort in these pages.

I know I saw myself in the lines that mention self-harm and self-disgust. I saw myself in the essay in which Sophie greedily revels in thinness and hunger and the careful measurement of what she consumed. I saw myself in the pages that talk about delayed grief and getting on with things too big too soon after an inevitable but painful loss. I saw myself a lot even thought my experiences have been to different to Sophie's.

You'll see yourself. And even if you don't, you'll wonder if your friend or relative who went through something similar felt they way Sophie felt. You might see them through a different, more empathic lense. You'll recommend it to your friends. You won't let them borrow your copy, because it feels like a reference text that you can go back to and you won't want to lose it. It's the perfect example of why I love reading books of personal essays. This book has the potential to make big, haunted house lady-sized strides towards ending mental illness stigma. And it's really kind, actually, of Sophie to share some of her most private experiences with us even though it must have been a very scary thing to do.

[Sarah O'Riordan | travelseatsreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't a pleasant book to read. It isn't a book you'll cuddle up and relax into the couch in comfort with. But it is a very important one that I recommend everyone read.

This book is a raw, and agonising pain. From the very first few lines Sophie is violently honest with the reader about everything. Within this collection of very personal essays she has allowed us to see the darkest inner most thoughts imaginable and that is one of the amazing things about this book. A lot of these thoughts you don't need to imagine because I guarantee you, you will see yourself somewhere within this book.

It is so honestly refreshing to see Sophie delve head first into her darkness and voice that "normal" people can have these dark sometimes warped thoughts or that people can laugh maniacally at the most inappropriate and twisted humour and still be good mothers, good friends and good people.

It's so much easier to talk about mental health now than years previously but what isn't easy or comfortable to talk about is mental illness and the agony and impact struggling with that engulfing mental illness has on everyone involved.

There is so much within this book that I could sit here and type for days praising and discussing the heartbreaking content. There is so much of myself within this book that at times it was deeply uncomfortable to read. This is a book that needed to be written and one that needs to be read.

The only slight I had on the book was completely situational. I'm not a mother and certainly don't plan to be so I did find it hard to connect with one or two of the essays on motherhood. However, the stark agony of it still jumped from the pages.

I took my time with it and it will be one I know I will jump back into for many years to come.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If the moment calls for sincerity, I want to revolt.” Corpsing: My Body And Other Horror Shows, the new literary non-fiction collection by Sophie White, publishes next with Tramp Press, and I was lucky enough to get an early copy this week, which I had to tuck into at once. Corpsing was one of the books I was most excited to read in 2021 — it did not disappoint. Not even close. White is an exquisite essayist, writing with candour and wry humour on a subject of difficult and humourless subjects, from grief to postnatal depression to addiction, morbid obsessions and body image. With her sharp eye and creepy disposition (creepy in the best way possible, I must add), White turns over the familiar stones of suffering and, dusting the undersides with her life and perspective, unearths a truly invigorating, exorcising way of interacting with traumas psychological and bodily. I won’t say much now — I’ll have a proper review out next week, with some of my favourite bits and quotes and facets (there’s so many) of a book that cuts right through the flesh + bone of contemporary life to the sick little heart of being a person obsessed with the darkness in all things, in particular the self. But I want to say that if you can pre-order this book, get yourself a copy on release day, do it — take a sick day if you need to, but read this book as soon as you can, and laugh, cry, gasp, scream — see another’s pain, and feel seen in yours.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a rawness and energy to this book which jumps off the page. White is searingly honest about her experiences and doesn’t shy away from writing about dark topics.
As another reviewer noted, it is difficult to rate a book which documents such very personal experiences. However, not all authors connect with not all readers, and although White and I share many experiences and demographics (we’re both from Dublin; we’re of a similar generation – White is three years younger than I am), I did not connect with her from this text. Maybe it was the very different meanings we made of these experiences. For example, she describes her years living in New Zealand or working seasons skiing in the mountains as her ‘lost’ years as is very quick to disavow them, as opposed to the real business of living back in Dublin. I have also done those things (indeed still live in New Zealand) and for me, rather than being ‘lost’ years, I feel they were hugely formative: I ‘found’ myself. Her relationship with her mother, with whom she readily admits to being ‘enmeshed’, troubled me as well.
No doubt this book has and will hit the spot exactly with many readers, as the number of five star ratings evinces. I wasn’t one of them, but again this is to do with what I brought to the book rather than any flaws in the book itself.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is quite a difficult book to review. On the surface and even when you dive into the book, it strikes me as an intensely brave and honest book. I am filled with admiration for the author of this book for being able to address these issues and then articulate them. The content while often bleak and difficult to grapple with wasn’t the problem. I found the writing difficult to follow. There didn’t seem to be any linear aspect to the essays. Instead, multiple times the timeframe skipped and jumped until it was nearly impossible to follow. The result was that you had to read the essays in conversation with each other without reflection on how they interacted. The essays also talked over each other with different issues dominating and obscuring others. At times I wasn’t sure what the scope of the essay was or how to engage with it and while the essays are personal at times the viewpoint felt somewhat prescriptive. However, I did enjoy the frank and at times brutal tone of the collection. Having finished I’m just left with a somewhat odd taste in the mouth.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t even know how to begin to sum up Sophie’s collection of essays. They are so raw and open as she bares her profound grief and mental health for the world to see all entwined with the unrelenting demands of motherhood. Sometimes it feels very voyeuristic to be reading them but some essays I felt as if she had picked parts from my brain and printed it for the world to see. The pain is so visceral and in parts unyielding but there is a delicate thread of perseverance stitching it together. I’ve never in my life read anything so bone chillingly honest, I read it in two sittings as I wanted to sit with some of the essays for a little while longer and really digest them. I feel she’s a kindred spirit in a strange way, I applaud her bravery and her strength. I normally don’t annotate or mark any books but the compulsion was too strong with this one. It will live with me for the foreseeable future.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a raw collection of essays. I think Sophie is an incredible writer, so honest, funny and insightful. I read it in a short space of time and maybe I needed to take longer over it, but some of the essays did seem to run together (maybe that’s how it’s supposed to). My favourite were: Smotherhood, Needle Girls and Self-Soothing.
I found it was a difficult time to read this book after a recent court case in Ireland, watching Dr Marie Cassidy’s casebook last night and I read Sophie speaking out in a paper yesterday “I have what she had” - mental illness / health supports in this country are on their knees.
I think this book is really important for highlighting how important timely access to reliable supports (psychiatry, psychology) is for people. It’s a brilliant, timely, difficult and sometimes funny read. As others have said here, it’s quite a hard collection to ‘review’ really, but I would definitely recommend you read it.

[Joseph R · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that I would not usually have chosen but recommended to me by a friend - I found it quite relatable in sections but also very eye opening in others, a glimpse into the struggles of living with mental illness and the impact that has on what most would consider the mundane everyday tasks.
The essay format of the book makes it extremely easy to dip in and out of and take at your own pace. Sophie White bares a very real set of essays that give a real glimpse into her experience and journey with mental health as well as the impact that dementia / Alzheimer's has on not just the person going through it but also those around them, and what a slow burner of a disease it is. It highlights the double death of the person, the first as their mind slowly slips away and the second when their body gives in, sometimes years after the mind.

[Jessica Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a totally warped view of what this book was about, I thought it was going to be a kind of horror story/comedy which in some ways it is but not as I had expected at all. It’s a collection of essays sharing some of the most raw and honest moments of motherhood I’ve ever read. I feel that I would blush if I bumped into Sophie now. I had thought I had a good idea of who she was from listening to her excellent podcast with Jen “Mother of Pod” but this was next level. Thank you Sophie for opening yourself up as you have, you’re braver than the rest of us and I hope that as you say in the book “naming the frightening thing goes some way towards neutering it’s awful power.” And please, please be kind to yourself, some of your self criticisms brought me to tears.

[Darcie-Jade Faccio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this cover to cover in one sitting, I couldn't put it down even to sleep. So refreshingly honest and confessional. I read a lot of memoir, especially by other women, but something in this made me feel at time as though I was reading about myself. I was in tears by page 10 and in ribbons laughing by page 60. I bought this knowing Sophie from the Creep Dive and didn't know what to expect, the usual sense of humor in the face of the darkness of life is there of which I'm very much a fan but also so much more.