Her Body and Other parties
Genre: Short Stories
Original Publication date: October 2017
Book description: Debut novel, highly recommended, marketed as a feminist short story collection.
Real Good Reads description: 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
Thoughts:
Short story collections sometimes are hard to rate because some are enjoyable and others not so much depending on the reader. In this case I think I just did not feel any of them!
They ranged from paranormal, magical realism, contemporary fiction but most had very dark themes or subjects if not to say very weird and ard to follow storylines.
I had heard so many good things about this book but then I read it and hated it. IT is a very short book, in a sense and it took me over a month to finish it because I just couldn't push through to the end, either I stopped reading or simply picked up something else.
Let's try to give a better idea of the story themselves.
1. The Husband Stitch. Is about about a woman who always wears a ribbon around her neck, it tells the story of her early teenage life but only from the time she met her future husband. He did not seem like the best of husbands. He is too demanding and she gives in too much. The story pictures a relationship not to my liking really. But the story is mysterious enough to keep you wanting to continue reading.
2. Inventory. I did not get this one and from there it just went down. It is a journal type thing of the woman's partners throughout her life I assume, while that is going on, there is in the background an epidemic of some sort that is never explored. I wanted to see more, what was going on outside, were things as bad as they seemed on her corner of the world, would she survive?
I would have enjoyed this more if it had been longer and provided more about the dystopian aspect.
3. Mothers, was another very confusing for me. It is an unreliable narrator? The main character may be involved with a woman named Bad or perhaps Bad is her split personality and she's a bit off. So it is about the main character and Bad, their relationship, them having a family, so yeah see how I don't really know?
Maybe the author intended this to be the purpose for you to discuss and figure out what really happens in that house? Is the woman crazy? Was there even a baby?
4. Especially Heinous. My least favorite of all. I do not watch the show and therefore was lost with the people ad who they were and everything. Other than that the super short mini comments each unrelated among each other lost me. This was the main reason it took me so long, I stopped reading this for a few weeks when I got to this point.
5. Real women have bodies. This was another that was ok a bit on the weird side but not the worst, thanks to it I decided to push through and get to the ending. It is about a girl who works in a mall, she falls for another girl and they start a fast-paced relationship. Also on the side, there is something happening women are fading. They start to flicker and then they are invisible and no longer have mass, they pass through everything yet stay standing on the ground, it is happening at random people don't know why but it is only to women.
Again I would have liked this one to be longer and provide a bit more information on the cause, the way it reacts slower or faster on some or how to stop it, or at least what happens after they fade, do they continue to age, get sick, do they die?
6. Eight Bites. This one is about a woman who decides she will go through surgery to get her figure. She has a bad relationship with her sisters, her daughter and no real friends. In the end I am not sure if she mended her relationship with her daughter as she hoped to do with the surgery and the new beginning she envisioned or not.
7. The resident. This is a story of a writer who is invited to stay in a cabin in the woods, this destination is thought for artist of different areas to provide them peace of mind to get inspired and work on their independent projects. It is full of strange things happening, not knowing if she's imagining or what is really going on. Another woman, disliked by all, not sure if she's sane therefore can't quite believe everything happening.
Did not like this.
8. Difficult at parties. This is about a woman who is having diffilties after a traumatic event that is neve quite discussed. It might have been rape, she is being supported by Paul, which assume is the boyfriend or partner. It made me very uncomfortable to read it like really bad, there were a lot of crude mentions about sex. She was clearly disturbed and had issues adjusting to her situation, again not a good choice for me.
In the end I really wished I had not read this, I am not sure I can give this a fair review. I am not sure if it's just me because so many other people seem to enjoy it, but well personal tastes can't be compared.
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