Using the real titles, Machado makes up an intriguing plot full of supernatural elements and twists. The ending of this worked perfectly for me, but the story itself was too long; twelve seasons is a lot of episodes and apparently, a lot of repetition.
I got the point about dead prostitutes 30 pages in and at points it just kept going. Have to admit, though, that several of the episode descriptions will stay with me. I really appreciated it; the detail is visceral and the emotion raw. It is far more metaphorical than I tend to prefer, though. The thematic conclusions are good, but unfortunately, I felt it was a bit overly long, and repeated concepts we've already come to. I read one a night with Melanie and Destiny.
Blog Goodreads Twitter Youtube View all 10 comments. Apr 18, Jenny Reading Envy rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobook , hoopla , national-book-award-nominees , read I ordered this for my library but grew impatient and listened to it on Hoopla instead. 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 I ordered this for my library but grew impatient and listened to it on Hoopla instead.
Some of the themes are disturbing, and the insertion at times of supernatural or fantastical elements make many of the stories feel even more dangerous than real life, or maybe it's that they highlight the danger of real life. The writing is powerful and I would not be surprised to see this win the award, although I'm still slightly more on board with Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Story by story: The Husband Stitch - This is a retelling of The Girl with the Ribbon Around her Neck, but somehow the husband is more domineering, and the lengthening of the story brings you more into her point of view. Inventory - A list of sexual encounters inside the context of a world falling apart due to a virus. This might be my favorite! Mothers - A disturbing story where I couldn't tell what was real and what was not.
A baby delivered by her lesbian partner, told "this is your baby," But then she is running through the park after stranger babies Especially Heinous - I could not understand what was going on here, and had to stop and look up some info about the book. The author has taken every episode of SVU, the show that focuses on sex crimes, usually against women, and builds an alternative story where women have bell eyes and something supernatural is going on and I just didn't really get it at all.
I'm sure if I had any familiarity at all with SVU the characters at least would make sense to me, but this was rough. And since it was in audio, I couldn't tell if this was a series of very short stories flash stories or what I was encountering, because the author keeps the title of each episode and then has a paragraph or a sentence after each.
I wish it had an intro or something, at least to navigate the audio verison. Real Women Have Bodies - If women really grew invisible Eight Bites - Well I'm not quite sure, but I think this is about weight loss surgery and the sacrifice of thin and what it does to our daughters?
It's rather frightening. The Resident - This one examines whether female writers are allowed to write about themselves the same way male writers are, what makes something art, how much autonomy do you have as a creative person? Difficult at Parties - A woman has gone through severe trauma and starts hearing the thoughts of actors on film.. Sep 09, Chelsea chelseadolling reads rated it it was ok.
This did NOT work for me. Honestly, 2 stars is generous. View all 6 comments. Sep 08, mark monday rated it it was ok Shelves: these-fragile-lives , new-dimensions , unstablenarratives , mnemonic-devices. 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 It feels strange giving 2 stars to an author with so much undeniable talent.
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 message itself. I love that! Machado's stories connect with a range of genres, from horror to science fiction to much else, while pushing beyond genre boundaries into a space where genre itself is but another tool in the toolbox of telling stories.
Machado loves ambiguity, and I love that too. And Machado is a feminist author in her evaluation and critique of how women are compartmentalized by society and by themselves and in her promotion of atypical roles for her female characters, while for the most part not using a heavy hand that is telling the reader I Am Making A Point Now.
I love that too. But here's what I don't love, and thus the 2 stars: most of these stories felt half-baked to me. The ideas are there, and the writing itself is strong. But her stories often didn't work for me because it felt like they existed solely on the level of idea - and to showcase the prose skills of the author.
I love challenging fiction but I also love a narrative that is telling me something in a way that makes sense and that resonates and that doesn't feel like its author had the beginning of a good idea and that's all. And that the strength of their writing ability would have to carry the story, rather than the idea behind the story itself.
A lot of these stories are like pies with an excellent crust but a filling that is all whipped cream. The worst of these is "Especially Heinous" which has an ingenious idea at its heart but becomes so bloated and self-indulgent that the idea itself is utterly lost in all of that whipped cream.
It started out as an energizing experience and ended up being an enervating one. All that said, there were a couple stories that really landed for me. I love how I am unable to describe this disturbing tale in one easy phrase, so I won't even try. Unfortunately these were the first stories in the collection; expectations of further excellence were created but only frustration and disappointment followed.
Jun 29, Beverly rated it really liked it Shelves: fierce-feminist-fables. A quote from the book that I loved, "god should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men. 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 A quote from the book that I loved, "god should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men. The story, "Especially Heinous" was the only humorous one, but I got kind of weary of it and it was the only story I could not finish. Nov 12, Simon rated it really liked it.
A crazy sometimes conflicting collection of fabulist tales. When this collection works, on tales of women with ribbons on their bodies, sexual encounters during a world ending epidemic, women literally vanishing in their skin and people who can hear the inner thoughts of adult film stars when they are watching porn, it is amazing.
That sa A crazy sometimes conflicting collection of fabulist tales. That said the brilliance won over. View all 3 comments. Machado weaves together old folk tales, urban legends and some meta aspects, where she addresses the reader directly.
It's pretty brilliant, actually. This is a strong and overtly femini 4. This is a strong and overtly feminist tale that takes a very dim view of men generally: men are thoughtlessly manipulative and dismissive of women's feelings. Even a strong-willed woman, like our narrator, can get worn down by it over time. The stronger your feminist leanings, the more likely you are to appreciate this story. It's free online at Granta.
While some men would behave in the way the men do in this story, I don't think it's fair to paint all men with the same brush. Content note: strongly explicit sexual content.
Definitely not for readers who want clean reads. View all 19 comments. In her debut collection of short stories, Carmen Maria Machado mingles fabulism, body horror, erotica and feminist commentary. The thrust of Her Body and Other Parties is perhaps best encapsulated by the second story in the book, 'Inventory'.
It starts with the narrator cataloguing everyone she's slept with, taking on that now-near-compulsory clinical tone, that Muumuu House type of thing of talking endlessly about sex but doing so in an affectless style that doesn't communicate any passion or j In her debut collection of short stories, Carmen Maria Machado mingles fabulism, body horror, erotica and feminist commentary.
It starts with the narrator cataloguing everyone she's slept with, taking on that now-near-compulsory clinical tone, that Muumuu House type of thing of talking endlessly about sex but doing so in an affectless style that doesn't communicate any passion or joy or pleasure. It suddenly becomes more interesting when a hidden narrative emerges: as the narrator progresses through her later conquests, she talks of a pervasive virus, family members lost, a quarantine zone, evacuations and refugees.
It's an unexpected approach to the dystopian theme and a pleasing subversion of first impressions, yet the story as a whole remains unsatisfying. Then there's the much-discussed and multi-award-nominated 'The Husband Stitch', a modern fable which updates the campfire tale 'The Green Ribbon'.
Like the original, it is a horror story with a gruesome twist, but the true horrors here are ordinary ones: the husband's insistence that the wife have nothing of her own; the titular stitch itself. In striving for a fairytale flavour, Machado uses a mannered voice that renders her narrator smug and oddly prudish even as she recounts exhausting quantities of sex a recurring motif, as you may already have guessed.
I did enjoy her wry stage directions: 'If you are reading this story out loud, move aside the curtain to illustrate this final point to your listeners. It'll be raining, I promise. This starts out as a cute absurdist gimmick, but it's about five times longer than it needs to be.
Some images the ghosts with bells for eyes; the grotesque secret of the dresses in 'Real Women Have Bodies' just don't make enough sense to work, much less shock. There's always an emptiness, something missing. And there are so many instances of 'inside of' in these stories — inside of me, inside of her, inside of him, I swear it feels like every other paragraph in some stories.
I wish an editor had taken their scalpel to those 'of's. My favourite was 'The Resident'. While the subject matter is slightly more staid than some of the others — presumably semi-autobiographical in its portrait of a writer unravelling during a retreat — it's a relief that it isn't told at a cold, impersonal remove.
It actually has heart and a personality, unlike so many of the others, and contains one of the few truly rousing scenes in the book, when the narrator lashes out at a patronising acquaintance and defends her right to write about 'crazy' heroines and madwomen in attics.
This could be read as a manifesto for the collection as a whole but isn't enough to save it. Also strong is 'Eight Bites', in which the weight the protagonist loses through bariatric surgery takes on a life of its own.
It's difficult to articulate without sounding like an idiot who's missed the point entirely, but there's something I find so depressing about the kind of writing that's ostensibly feminist but seems to focus incessantly on the negatives of being a woman. In fiction such as this, the approach is often paired with candid-yet-detached writing about sex that I also find offputting not to mention extremely unsexy.
The stories are well-crafted and when they don't feel workshopped to death spark with strong ideas and entertaining metafictional touches, but Her Body and Other Parties didn't work for me the way I hoped it would. TinyLetter Twitter Instagram Tumblr It just isn't yours.
There was something about it that comes off so strong and vibrant, and I just love it. Every now and then, I'd be doing something totally mundane like folding laundry or washing the dishes and I'll randomly remember one of the stories here and I swear, I get the same chills I did when I read it.
This book haunted me- continuously haunts me. It's beautiful, evocative, and absolutely charming- the stories are quite odd but really clever. I initially rated this 4 stars but changed it to a perfect 5 cuz it deserves it. This book was awesome. Nov 04, Hannah rated it really liked it Shelves: short-stories , fantasy.
I was really looking forward to this book, ever since I saw a review by Roxane Gay for this; then when I read and loved one of these short stories earlier this year I was even more excited - and I was not disappointed in the least. I absolutely adored these stories and what Carmen Maria Machado has to offer. She writes just the kind of slightly unsettling and very upsetting short stories that I just adore. Her stories are twisted and mean but also beautiful beyond words.
They have a core feminis I was really looking forward to this book, ever since I saw a review by Roxane Gay for this; then when I read and loved one of these short stories earlier this year I was even more excited - and I was not disappointed in the least. They have a core feminist message while also being stylistically awesome and never losing sight of the humanity at the core of them. The stories are highly inventive, can be read both as a social commentary and often as love stories, her characters feel real and her language is precise and wonderful.
As is usually the case I adored some stories more than others but overall this was a very strong collection and I can absolutely understand the praise it has garnered it has been blurbed by Roxane Gay and Jeff VanderMeer among others. I loved "The Husband Stitch" this is the story I had read before , maybe even more so the second time around: this inventive rumination on what secrets women are allowed to keep made me mad and sad at the same time.
In "Inventory" a woman looks back on her past lovers as the world comes to an literal end around her. This story felt very different than the rest of the collection but I loved its wistful melancholy and the bleak surrounding Carmen Maria Machado evoked. This story was unsettling and creepy but also packed an immense emotional punch. Nov 14, Mackenzi rated it it was amazing.
Shelves: john-leonard-prize , read-in , national-book-critics-circle-winner , kirkus-prize-nominee , national-book-award-nominee , pen-nominee , published , horror , short-stories-essays , fantasy. Winner of the John Leonard Prize in Very well written erotic adventures of a lesbian. Way out there. View all 4 comments. May 16, Emily B rated it liked it.
As a result it became a chore to read. I found most of the other stories in the collection interesting and original. Dec 10, Thomas rated it liked it Shelves: short-stories-for-fun , lgbtq , fantasy , feminism , horror.
Carmen Maria Machado writes about women's most pressing desires and their most difficult challenges. Almost all of the stories contain some element of fantasy or science fiction, such as women whose bodies disappear or a world that comes to an end because of a terrifying disease.
Through these unique, uncomfortable narratives, Machado explores the pleasure and pain of women 3. Through these unique, uncomfortable narratives, Machado explores the pleasure and pain of women and their bodies, as well as the violence men often enact onto women's bodies.
My favorite stories included "Eight Bites," which follows a woman who gets gastric bypass surgery and examines body image and self-esteem and how others influence our relationship with food, "The Husband Stitch," which interrogates male entitlement to women's bodies, and "Real Women Have Bodies," which explores a world in which women's bodies disappear and draws parallels to how society treats women and their bodies now.
Overall, a genre-bending collection of stories that gives much-needed space to the narratives of queer women. I only detract from my rating because I struggled to connect with the characters in these stories aside from the three I named, as the fabulist or fantastical elements dominated the narrative or the narrative did not go on for long enough for me to feel invested as often is the case with short stories.
Still, I would recommend this collection to those interested in dark, sensual stories about women and their bodies. Aug 04, Kayla Dawn rated it it was ok. I don't know, I just could not get into any of the stories and it took me a hell lot of willpower to pick this book back up after I put it down lol I don't know, I just could not get into any of the stories and it took me a hell lot of willpower to pick this book back up after I put it down lol Shelves: fantasy , horror , bipoc-rep , collections , queer , owned-p , adult.
I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them. This anthology isn't so much a collection of stories as it is a collection of experiences. Carmen Maria Machado writes beautifully; her voice is so incredibly unique, and no matter the content of the tale, she transports you right into the scene - for better or for worse. I'll do my best to give you my thoughts on each story, but at the end of the day, this is the sort of collection that I highly reco I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.
I'll do my best to give you my thoughts on each story, but at the end of the day, this is the sort of collection that I highly recommend you simply pick up for yourself. The narrator carries us through her life: through meeting her significant other, wedding him, giving birth, the woes and beauties of motherhood, and more.
She explores the paradox of being a woman who is proud of embracing her sexuality, while still, at times, noting the shame that society places upon her for it. She portrays the struggle of motherhood, and trying to do one's best despite all of the many obstacles that may cross a mother's path.
Most of all, she explores feminism, and the fact that a woman, no matter how much she loves her partner or her child ren , remains her own property at the end of the day. When a woman allows another human being to claim "ownership" of her, she loses herself. This entry to the collection is incredibly explicit, but woven into the stories, we learn of a world coming to a halt, and an apocalyptic reality setting into place thanks to an unstoppable disease.
Machado builds up a lovely but inescapable sense of impending dread. If you enjoy unreliable narration and being left to piece things together for yourself, this will be right up your alley, but it was just a little too blurry and grey of an ending for my taste.
One thing I will give Machado the utmost credit for in this story, though, is the incredible way she writes an abusive relationship. There were so many lines that were brutally familiar, but so cathartic, because they felt so raw and genuinely. There was no way for me to tell her that we are so close, we are so close, please don't do this now, we are so fucking close. It follows several "seasons", with each "episode"'s synopsis ranging from a sentence to a paragraph.
It was actually an incredibly unique idea, and I loved the metaphors being presented, but it overstayed its welcome and I found myself drudging through the last several pages. Our narrator, a dress shop employee, lives in a world where women keep disappearing. They don't vanish into thin air; instead, they simply wake up one day to find their bodies fading, until they become translucent, and then are gone for good.
At first, I believed it to be a commentary on society's expectations of women in general, but at one point, the story explains that women are fading younger and younger, and suddenly, I was reading a story about a world in which women lose their value as they lose their youth, and their worth is "lost" earlier with each passing generation.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Soon, I'll be nothing more, too. None of us will make it to the end. Let me preface this first, though, by saying that I have never seen a representation of an eating disorder that is as raw, and authentic, and flawless as what I read in this short story. I felt like I was gasping for air at times. Publisher: Graywolf Press Awards:. Kindle Book Release date: October 3, Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget.
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Have a card? Add it now to start borrowing from the collection. The library card you previously added can't be used to complete this action. Please add your card again, or add a different card. We often discuss genre-bending authors, but Machado bends the genres she tackles — from fantasy to horror to realism to comedy — so far that they seem to create a new shape altogether.
From the secret purpose of a green ribbon tightly wound round a woman's neck, to an artists' retreat that sparks uncomfortable connections, to a dressmaker who discovers the dresses she sews are filled with ghosts, it's very hard to pick a single standout from this collection.
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Cancel anytime. Unavailable in your country. Continue browsing Preview unavailable. Publisher: Macmillan Publishers. Released: Oct 3, ISBN: Format: Book. Also available as Science Fiction. About the author CM. Read more. Related Books. A Dowry of Blood by S. Yolk by Mary H. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Related categories Skip carousel.
Sci Fi. Rate as 1 out of 5, I didn't like it at all. Rate as 2 out of 5, I didn't like it that much. Rate as 3 out of 5, I thought it was OK. Rate as 4 out of 5, I liked it.
Rate as 5 out of 5, I loved it. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars. Write a review optional. Critic reviews Carmen Maria Machado's collection of stories is so wonderfully weird. Scribd Editors Carmen Maria Machado essentially broke the literary scene with this collection of wonderfully weird and brilliantly crafted short stories. Scribd Editors. Reader reviews cavernism. SOo good.
This story collection starts strong with an eerie, modern telling of the Girl with the Green Ribbon story, and every story that follows is bizarre, spooky, strange, and wonderfully written. Most of the stories are very sex-centric, and it says a lot about the quality of the writing that as an asexual reader I was still pulled in and super engaged.
My only beef with the book was that the longest story, "Especially Heinous", was the hardest for me to get into and engage with, and I was a bit sad that it took up such a large portion of the book, since I wanted more short stories like all the others in the book! But that's a personal beef. This book is excellent and you should go read it right now. This was Santathing selection from two years ago - and I finally got around to reading it. These types of books are always an odd one for me.
I'm too literal to enjoy some of the stories. I appreciate what the author is doing, and I find the writing to be excellent, but stories that are metaphors for something else and never resolve to a concrete explanation always leave me a bit hanging. On the other hand, there are stories I really enjoyed - specifically "Especially Heinous". I loved everything about it - the oddness of the setting, the ghost girls with Bells in their eyes, the doppelgangers.
Its a really wonderful story. So this is a volume I will be keeping and I hope to be giving it a second read. It really deserves the praise it has received. Terrific collection with real bite. I know it's tough for publishers to market short story collections, but I never mind a new collection from a fresh voice.
An interest collection fused with originality, sensuality, and emotion turmoil. Machado focuses on the intimate details of experience and fuses this into a coherent and truthful, without holding back, set of short stories. Every now and then a writer comes along who not only takes masterful command of her medium but has the courage and artistry to penetrate the veil between the superficial world and the realm of the soul. Every once in a miraculous while the publishing world actually gives this writer to readers.
In these stories, with authorative clarity, Machado pays homage to gothic horror, modern crime TV, the eerie legacy of the Brownies, the American family dream, and more, all the while also tearing all of it apart and basically showing us our own glistening entrails. Yet that makes the book sound awfully heavy--it is indeed thick with complexities and disturbance, but delicious to read, full of humor, eroticism, and ewwww-gross delights.
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. In frank, open, haunting writing, she stresses how the body becomes a projection of the way women have been viewed- and are still viewed- in our societies.
Beauty, sexuality, everything is preconceived, even in our modern, sophisticated world. More so now, I believe. Many support- either consciously or not- that you must change when you are different or you will find yourself ostracised. This notion was obviously much more common in the past. In my opinion, today we have a different kind of isolation. We let others decide and throw parties on our bodies and our souls. Because we need acceptance. The Husband Stitch: A woman, born with a green ribbon on her neck, finds love and creates a beautiful family.
Or does she? A dark tale that becomes darker with references to urban legends and tragic folk myths. Absolutely brilliant. Inventory: A woman remembers past lovers as a deathly virus is slowly destroying the country. Mothers: A very complex story, centered around a horribly dysfunctional relationship, where reality blends with the memories of a shattered mind.
This is one of the most powerful moments in the collection.
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