Review: The Extremities - Samantha Kimmey

Genre: Literary Fiction, Disability/Illness

Published: October 2025

My Rating: 2/5 stars

‘I was fearful of disturbing it, like the disorder was some animal that would go berserk if it realised it was confined in the cage of my body.’

One day at work, a young newspaper reporter is suddenly struck with a mysterious pain in her hands that renders her unable to type. A string of doctors offer her a string of diagnoses, ranging from carpal tunnel, to arthritis, to her body’s way of communicating an unresolved trauma. Helped (and often times hindered) by her coworkers, editor and naturalist boyfriend, Kim finds herself faced with a dilemma. Will she fight The Disorder, or is she better off submitting to it…

I go into any book that explores chronic pain and disability through the lens of “weird fiction” with high hopes. Unfortunately, this was not for me…

The Extremities was a 300+ page endurance test, that I frankly struggled to finish. Instead of an insightful narrative on the topic of cohabiting in a body with (chronic) pain, I found myself slogging through “carpal tunnel - the memoir” with the world blandest main character…

I don’t mind an unlikable protagonist, and I’m actually very interested in reading about characters who cope with their chronic illness in ways that I personally don’t relate to. Kim on the other hand, was less unlikable and more of a “blank slate” living an utterly mundane life. For a novel that’s largely about the protagonists inner world, that’s bound to be a problem…

The story itself never truly grabbed me either. On multiple occasions, I felt like it was on the brink of communicating something meaningful, but each time it failed to follow through with it fully. It flirts with the idea that Kims troubled relationship with her mother (who was a doctor with a ailment herself) is related to her current illness, but doesn’t truly dive into what that means to her. It emphasizes the fact that Kim struggles to communicate the nature of her pain to her doctors, but never shows us the isolation and loneliness that comes with that inability to communicate.

Then there were the multiple subplots of the “extremities”. Apart from referring to her literal extremities (hands) as the source of trouble in her life, Kim struggles with other “extremes” and contradictions too. Traditional medicine vs her naturalist boyfriend’s approach to health. The neat world of corporate life and journalism vs the wild natural disasters she’s writing about. The idea of physical pain vs mental suffering. Fighting pain vs submitting and surrendering to it, and incorporating it into your inner world… ALL OF THESE could’ve been interesting, if only they’d been developed more.

Overall, I truly wanted to like this book, but the entirety just felt underdeveloped and fell completely flat against my lack of engagement.

Many thanks to Netgalley and University Of Iowa Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.