Book Review
Title: Her Body and Other Parties
Author: Carmen Maria Machado
Genre: Short Story/Anthology
Rating: ****
Review: As this is a short story collections, I will review each story individually as I have done with other collections in the past, then sum up my thoughts on the collection as a whole at the end of the review. I didn’t really know anything about this collection going into it but the synopsis sounded interesting and I had to pick it up especially since it was under 250 pages long.
The Husband Stitch
The Husband Stitch really kicked off this collection with a bang. We are introduced to our female protagonist who is attracted to a young man and she makes her advances known to him which leads to a sexual relationship between the pair. However, this young girl wears a green ribbon around her throat and tells him that he can never touch it despite him asking repeatedly to do so. Their relationships continues to develop leading to the pair getting engaged just before she turns eighteen and getting married soon after much to the delight of her parents. Throughout their relationship they are happy but the husband keeps making moves to try and touch the ribbon even if he doesn’t try to remove it. Soon after their honeymoon, the woman learns that she is pregnant and the couple are overjoyed but she worries a lot about whether or not the child is going to be a girl and wear a ribbon like her. As the pregnancy progresses the husband makes more attempts to find out the secret behind the woman’s ribbon but she is always able to divert his attention or prevent him from removing it. By the time their child is born, she is overjoyed to learn that it is a little boy but the husband mentions something about an extra stitch before she passes out. All throughout this story we get smaller stories that the woman was told as a child and she tells her son these as he continues to grow. The husband though is developing a resentment towards the ribbon and wants to know the secret behind it claiming a wife should have no secrets from her husband. After their son leaves for college and is planning on getting married himself the couple try to reignite their relationship but the husband refuses to leave the ribbon alone, until one day the woman asks if he truly wants to know why she wears it and he does. She tells him to remove it which he does and at this point the woman’s head falls off killing her. That ending was shocking but we learn that the ribbon was the only thing keeping her head attached and she seems to be unlucky in this sense as other girls have their ribbons on their fingers, ankles and everywhere else.
Inventory
Inventory was an interesting story given what is happening with the world at the moment. It follows a woman documenting all the people she has ever been in a relationship with or had sex with. This doesn’t seem like much until you learn there is a virus spreading throughout America and the woman is trying to outrun it. Lots of the people are people she has encountered along the way and she even loses a few of them to the virus before taking refuge on an island hoping that the virus won’t find its way across the way. It was short, sweet and a little sad but I really enjoyed this story.
Mothers
Mothers was a quite confusing story to follow but it seems to follow and unnamed woman and a woman called Bad, a couple who somehow manage to produce a baby called Mara. Bad abandons the other woman with Mara knowing that she isn’t equipped to raise a child but despite the issues along the way she manages to succeed. However, we get the final portion of the story where the mother is reflecting on how she raised Mara and her younger brother Tristan but it almost seems like the unnamed woman might not be the true mother of the children and that she has taken them but I wasn’t really sure even after reading this story twice.
Especially Heinous
Especially Heinous was a story revolving around the TV show Law & Order: SVU which I used to watch religiously back in the day. This was the strangest story so far in the collection as it just seems to be a list of the author’s thoughts while watching all 272 episodes of the show. Yet it was so compelling to read even though I am sure half of the events the author talks about don’t actually take place in the show but in the author’s mind. It was trippy and weird and honestly, I loved it, which means I am definitely going to be binging some Law & Order: SVU again soon.
Real Women have Bodies
This story was really interesting and I would like to see this one expanded upon. It follows a young woman working at a clothing store who has a crush on the designer’s daughter who delivers the clothes. Through her we learn that there is something happening with the world causing certain women to fade to incorporeal forms but they can’t figure out what is causing it or how to stop it so most people have just accepted it. One day, the designer’s daughter, Petra asks the girl out on a date where they become sexually involved. Petra shows her how the faded women turn up and attached themselves to the clothes as her mother sews them together as it is the only time they can be touched or felt is if they are attached to something else. This disturbs the girl and she ends up quitting her job but she begins to see the faded girls and women in everything from clothes to food. She and Petra begin dating and everything seems fine until one day Petra begins to fade, over the next few months the girl make the most of their time together but they also seem to ignore the fact Petra is fading until one day she disappears altogether. The girl can’t stand losing Petra and she returns to the clothes store cutting up all the dresses demanding the faded women leave but they don’t even respond to her like they have become the very item they have attached themselves to. This story had a trippy sci-fi feel to it and I honestly felt it would have been amazing to be expanded on as maybe a novella where we could get some more insight into what causes the women to fade.
Eight Bites
Eight Bites was a story about self-acceptance that was done in a really unique way. In this world people can get surgery to change something about themselves they same way we can now only when they get the surgery, they bring something back with them. The youngest of four sister and the mother of Cal, decides to get the surgery because she is unhappy with her weight and her post-baby body even years after giving birth. In the aftermath of the surgery, she can feel something in the house, her sisters tell her they experienced the same thing but it was good for them. The thing I assume is a manifestation of the weight the woman has shed lingers around the house until one day she beats up telling it that it is unwelcome. After that she barely sees it but it hasn’t left her and the surgery itself limits the person to only 8 bites of food before they can eat no more. This goes on for years until the woman is 79 when she is going to die another price of the surgery and it is her weight, her conscious I don’t know what to call it that is there with her when the time comes and she realises this manifestation has loved her even when she didn’t love it which also reflects her relationship with her daughter and I would have liked to have seen more from this story.
The Resident
The Resident was a very strange story and possibly the strangest one in the whole collection as we follow a writer who has been accepted for a residency at the Devil’s Throat, a retreat of sorts for artists. There she is one among many simply working on her craft but very quickly we see that something isn’t right as she falls ill quite violently and often wakes up covered in pus filled boils, almost like a plague has descended there and there is a lingering fear in a lot of the other residents. However, the longer the writer is there the more she begins to change into something she is afraid of until she is literally at the point of having a mental breakdown and leaves returning home to her wife but something just seemed very off about this story and though I couldn’t tell you why it felt very unsettling to read.
Difficult at Parties
This was one of my favourite stories as we follow a couple with the woman returning from the hospital after what I believe to be a sexual assault and she is trying to come to terms with her body again. However, she notices in the time when she watches sexual videos, she can hear the thoughts of the people in them but not the thoughts of the people around her. When she and Paul attend a party hosted by some of Paul’s friends, she realises how uncomfortable she is in her own skin and notices how everyone around her even Paul seems to be oversexualised. Before they leave, she steals a camera from one of the guests which she uses to record herself in the night as she has really bad night terrors but there is another purpose for this as she doesn’t remember much from the past even when Paul prompts her. When she convinces him to have sex, the camera is recording them and the story ends with her sitting down to watch the recording presumably to learn what she and Paul were truly thinking in those moments. While it didn’t have much going on in this story the tone was dark and unsettling which really out you on edge and that cliff-hanger ending was the perfect choice.
Overall, Her Body and Other Parties was a very interesting collection to read as it combined genres that you wouldn’t normally expect with a mixture of tones and writing styles throughout. In addition to this, it is the author debut book which I was astounded by and I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for more books from Machado in the future.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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