This debut poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Susannah Dickey experiments with form to examine our obsession with the dead female body. True-crime stories have come to dominate podcasts and documentaries, with many of them focusing (as does fictional crime) on murdered women. The case Dickey homes in on is that of the ‘Isdal Woman’, whose body was discovered in a valley in Norway in 1970 and who remains unidentified to this day.

In Part 1, Dickey creates a blunt satire of a podcast (with echoes of an existing BBC one) in which the case is salaciously discussed by two presenters: one male, one female. She ventriloquises the glee of the podcast’s creators and, in styles from free verse to couplets, conjures surreal and disjointed moments from Isdal Woman’s final days. There are scenes involving talking armchairs, and flights of imagination inspired by the woman’s fingerbones. The male presenter is crassly fixated on his female co-host, and the producers prioritise ratings over a victim’s dignity. However the expressions of misogyny here feel over-simplified, and in such an experimental, feminist work, Dickey is surely preaching to the choir. 

Part 2 tilts the lens to provide psychoanalytical commentary on our obsession with women and true crime. Once in prose, Dickey’s ideas breathe more freely as she engages with theorists from George Bataille to Judith Butler: you can feel her grappling for answers to a problem that goes deeper than boycotting Spotify. In Part 3, we return to nebulous poetic territory as Dickey asks us to consider the view of the woman from a different angle. Her determination to stick to a creative vision (sometimes at the expense of communication), will be admirable to some, irritating to others. What no one can deny is that Dickey is dazzlingly ambitious, unafraid to make up her own rules of structure and concept. ISDAL may divide opinion but it will start conversations. 

ISDAL is out now, published by Picador.