Sunday 28th June 2026, 10:30am in person book club event

Book Club event In Collaboration with Essex Book Festival

Book Club / Author event with Emma van Straaten discussing THIS IMMACULATE BODY

Individual readers and Book Club groups are invited to hear Author Emma van Straaten speak about her book This Immaculate Body.

In conversation with Red Lion Book in collaboration with Essex Book Festival this event encourages questions from the audience.

THIS IMMACULATE BODY is the inaugural winner of the Women’s Prize Discoveries Award, as well as an exploration of class, race, gender, body image and shame.

DESCRIPTION OF THIS IMMACULATE BODY

Can you climb inside a stranger’s life and make him love you?

Alice has been cleaning Tom’s flat every Wednesday for a year. With every smudge wiped from his coffee cup, every crease smoothed out in his bed, every multivitamin counted from the jar, Alice spirals deeper into infatuation. But as Alice prepares for the moment when they will finally meet face-to-face, she discovers that love might not be the cure she thought it was.

As Alice frantically tries to cling to an imagined future with Tom, the line between fantasy and reality become ever more blurred, putting everything she has dreamed of at risk.

This Immaculate Body is a story of obsession, of the way women view the world and the ways that the world views them.