my becoming-a-genius project, part 2! (and also one of my favorite books of 2020 - see the full list: https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...)in case you missed the first one, here's the description:i have decided to become a genius.to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.and yes, i chose this one due in no small part to...

I am truly blown away by the talent of Carmen Maria Machado. I find myself floored by her metaphors, deeply pulled in by her prose. I feel in awe of her, really. If you're looking for a good short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties is really special. It's weird and wild, and some of the stories take some time to sort out. But they are great. One of my favorites is available to read on Granta.com.And if you read it—and you like it—but you can’t tell why you liked it, this article helped...

Her Body and Other Parties is the debut book by Carmen Maria Machado, whose movie reviews I was familiar with in the Los Angeles Times. Published in 2017, I bit on this short story collection with the publisher's promise of fiction that "borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism." I found it to be rough in terms of quality control, a talented beginner trying way too hard. The first and second of eight pieces are terrific but everything tha...

A creepy, beautiful, disturbing tale that will haunt me for a long, long time! A blend of horror stories and urban legends, "The Husband Stitch" explores the implications of a husband trying to control every part of his wife's life and not letting her keep anything private. – A wife, he says, should have no secrets from her husband.– I don’t have any secrets, I tell him.– The ribbon.– The ribbon is not a secret, it’s just mine. The story touches on the loss of self in a relationship, a...

‘’What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it?’’ This book is one of those cases when you feel someone calling your name. From the enticing cover to the cryptic tale. Naturally, this being a short story collection falling into Literary Fiction, Magical Realism and Gender Studies, finding itself in my hands was unavoidable. This proved to be a very special, extreme adventure.Machado writes with bravery, clarity, and confidence, centering he

The stories in Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange. Her voracious imagination and extraordinary voice beautifully bind these stories about fading women and the end of the world and men who want more when they’ve been given everything and bodies, so many human bodies taking up space and straining the seams of skin in impossible, imperfect, unforgettable ways.

2.5 starsCarmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties is a collection I was so excited to read I dragged a friend in to read it with me. We handed off back and forth who got to pick the next story, never going in order, and found ourselves surprisingly disappointed by each one. In all honesty, I was drawn to what Machado was trying to do here, to what she was trying to say. But, she didn't say it with enough force. Some of her stories, such as "Real Women Have Bodies" and "Eight Bites" seem...

A unique, experimental book with lovely writing and provocative content. Each story in this collection forces you to think about its themes and come up with your own interpretation for its message. I had to stop after finishing every story and look it up online to read other people's reviews and interpretations. I appreciated how every story explored the different and violent ways that women's bodies are treated, whether that comes from society or themselves. I also appreciated how the author fe...

A quote from the book that I loved, "god should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men.--Elizabeth Hewer, was placed before the stories and acts as a theme of sorts.The first story is a powerful blow to the gut and is a must read, entitled, "The Husband Stitch". I enjoyed "Inventory", and "Eight Bites" very much too. The other stories were not quite as enthralling for me, but they are menacing and disquieting. This writer is gifted and has a very distinct voice. The story, "Especial...

I'd rate this 4.5 stars.If you think of works of fiction like works of art, Carmen Maria Machado's debut story collection, Her Body and Other Parties , is an abstract painting. It's undoubtedly gorgeous and attention-getting, there's no one right way to interpret the things you see (or read), everyone will see something different in it, and each time you look, you'll catch something you didn't see the first time. You may also find yourself wondering, "What did that mean?"Seven of the eight st...

It feels strange giving 2 stars to an author with so much undeniable talent. Even more, one whose interests align with my own interests. Machado writes stories where her stylistic skills are front and center - her prose impresses with its elegant craftsmanship, its playfulness, its willingness to tell stories in different ways, its centralization of language itself and the way an author can bend and shape how words are pieced together so that the message package becomes as important as the messa...

You can read this for free: Here from Granta!Oh my God. This was the best short story I have ever read in my entire life. I'm writing this review in tears, because it was so immensely powerful. My hands are shaking, because this story is so real and so relevant. My stomach is in knots, because I'm not sure any combination of words I will create will do this story justice. This story is very feminist and very sexually explicit, but so damn important. It's about the life of a woman, who gives ever...

It’s 3am... I really need to fall back to sleep ...but I couldn’t stop reading these stories so before I drift off..I’ll just say a few things...ITS NOT FOR THE TIMID....I had read two of the stories yesterday and couldn’t stop talking to Paul about them on our hike yesterday. I was trying to figure them out. They are easy to read - but requires our interpretation. I just now finished the rest... some were even harder to wrap my head around. These are literary - kinda brilliant- short stories-wh...

Update: I do not think I was old enough to really get this when I read it (I was 16 and am now 20) so I would like to reread. For now, I will leave this as a four star, but I don't stand by this opinion, frankly. As a bonus Carmen Marie Machado story worth a read: The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror‘I only know how to scream,’ she said. Marcel placed his hand on her thigh. ‘And that’s all anyone wants from me.’****** “I choose this life,” the prostitute says to t...

This is a difficult review to write because I have a lot of mixed feelings.Her Body and Other Parties is like most short story collections I have read in that some of the stories worked for me far more than others. It is a strange, experimental, feminist collection that often crosses into fantasy, dystopia and/or magical realism. Some of the stories stepped out of the land of weird into, I feel, the land of nonsensical and absurdist. I liked these stories less than the others.Perhaps it is somew...

I enjoyed the majority of these stories and found them intriguing, however I did not like or get the story ‘especially heinous’. As a result it became a chore to read.I found most of the other stories in the collection interesting and original. Particularly ‘real women have bodies’ where women start fading and becoming invisible at random.

Queer fiction is vital. Heteronormativity operates by requiring queer people to be immediately explicit – to detail our bodies, lives, + loves such that we can be immediately intelligible to straight society. The coming out narrative is not just a heteronormative fantasy, it is a narrative crisis. Queer writers are pigeon-holed into self-narration because the expectation is that our stories should always be didactic, as if they exist to demystify our sexuality/gender which is already always susp...

Whew... This did NOT work for me. Honestly, 2 stars is generous.

I ordered this for my library but grew impatient and listened to it on Hoopla instead. It is one of the finalists for the 2017 National Book Award (USA.)This is a book of short stories, all centering around the female body, as evidenced by the title. This would not be a book for anyone who shocks easily, as there is sex, a lot of sex, some of it queer sex, and some of it deals with the aftermath of sexual assault. Some of the themes are disturbing, and the insertion at times of supernatural or f...

A debut collection of eight surreal stories, Her Body and Other Parties examines the emotional toll of gendered violence upon female interiority. The best of the stories give voice to the frustrations and longings of marginalized women as they navigate a society obsessed with controlling their bodies; the worst prize experiments in form over compelling storytelling, and the tales come across as gimmicky. All the pieces take place against terrifying backdrops—a global plague, the apocalypse, a mo...