Strange Bodies

A deeply moving love letter from an artist to his wife as they struggle with the loss of multiple pregnancies, exploring how powerful bonds transform as lovers become family.

In 2020, artist Tom de Freston and his novelist wife, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, discovered they were expecting twins. But Kiran miscarried, and thus began a long journey to parenthood that saw the loss of six more pregnancies. In this intimate, personal book, de Freston explores his experience of the losses in his artwork, searching for a way to make sense of his and his wife's grief. His search for understanding leads him to work by artists ranging from Titian and Francis Bacon to Braca Ettinger and Gerhard Richter, and deep into Ovid's myth of Orpheus. As the miscarriages mount and de Freston becomes ever more aware of the precarious and bodily experience that is pregnancy, he excavates the erotic charge of the male gaze, its yearning for connection, and the boundaries that exist between lovers. Addressed directly to de Freston's wife, Kiran, Strange Bodies is an authentic and powerfully moving account of a loving relationship coping with the struggle of making new life that pulses with wonder and insight.