Her Body and Other Parties
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.
Author: Carmen Maria Machado | Publisher: Graywolf Press
Goodreads | IndieBound (buy local!) | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Rating 5 / 5
I’m late to the party (no pun intended, I actually just typed that without realizing) on this one, but I never doubted that I would love it. So many people have spoken highly of it. Plus, sorta-weird-sorta-spooky-super-speculative feminist short stories? MADE FOR ME.
That instinct turned out to have been right. Of course, some stories are stronger than others, but all of them have something eerie and haunting about them that really makes you marinate. The first story, “The Husband Stitch,” is of course a standout, but I also really loved the one where she recounted a woman’s entire sex life as the US devolved into a plague-ridden dystopia. If that doesn’t make you think about the power of living your life and exploring your freedoms and what’s important and what’s not, then I don’t know what will.
Also, the story structured as a synopsis of all those Law & Order SVU episodes? Unbelievably creative. Mind-blowing.
I flew through this book in only a couple days. I can’t wait to read more of Machado’s work, including her upcoming new release.