Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: October 3, 2017
Source: Personal copy
Summary:
In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.
Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
My thoughts:
This was one of the Literati book club picks and I’m glad I selected it. It was a bit out of my comfort zone for sure but having the group to discuss it with as I was reading it made all the difference.
I have really come to enjoy reading short stories lately, which is something I never thought I would, so this book seemed the obvious choice and of course when I saw that the stories varied in genre, but focusing primarily on horror science fiction and folklore, with an underlying feminist slant, I was intrigued. I found that I could not read these straight through. I had to pause after each one and take a breath, think about them and go the group and see what they thought. This really is a collection that I feel needs discussion when reading as they are not the easiest to digest.
I will say even though these story stories are a bit strange they are completely unique, and the writing is just gorgeous. For that reason alone, I would pick up another book by Machado.
