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Finalist for the 2026 Epigram Books Fiction Prize

A woman holds everything together, then her body begins to disappear.

After years of working, Seok Lin stays home to care for her family. Then one day, her toe vanishes. Doctors diagnose her with a rare condition that causes parts of her body to disappear. But while Seok Lin fades, the needs of her family remain unchanged, and she finds herself drawn to Chad, an AI interface that offers a strange sense of comfort.

A surreal and unsettling novel about motherhood, care and what it means to slowly disappear in plain sight.

“I wanted to explore the invisible labour of stay-at-home motherhood through a speculative lens, in which the protagonist loses parts of herself—a toe, an arm and both her legs—before finally fading from view. Through her fight to reclaim herself, I hope this story helps women everywhere remember who they are beneath it all. Stay whole, stay seen.”
—Jaclyn Lim
“Jaclyn has penned a beautiful meditation on what we quietly lose when we give up so much of ourselves while caring for others. Her debut novel is a strikingly original take on the unseen and overlooked psychological cost of motherhood. With prose that is remarkably elegant and insightful, she deftly captures the relentless push and pull that many families face. I found it impossible to put this extraordinary book down and believe that many women will, like me, feel a deep connection to this story.”
—Sunita Sue Leng, author of The Unlikely Motherhood of Shaleni May

“This is a powerful and intricately crafted novel that uses a surreal conceit to explore the all-too-real erosion of self in modern motherhood.”
—Anthony Chen, award-winning film director of Ilo Ilo and We Are All Strangers
Jaclyn Lim is a writer from Singapore. Her work plays with the tension between the familiar and the surreal, finding meaning in the overlooked corners of daily life. She once wrote everything from obituaries and headline news to glossy women’s magazine features before running a floral studio. Now a stay-at-home mother, she writes in between school runs. Her short fiction has appeared in A Few Little Words (Red Herring Press, 2025), and she is working on a children’s picture book.

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A Strange Case of Erasure