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Her Body and Other Parties

Stories

Audiobook
0 of 2 copies available
0 of 2 copies available
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 naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Amy Landon's candid performance allows the women of Machado's short story collection to speak for themselves. Landon skillfully balances humor, sorrow, and a myriad of other emotions as she draws out the complexities of these women's physical and emotional lives. "The Husband Stitch," reminiscent in some ways of Alvin Schwartz's retelling of "The Green Ribbon," includes read-aloud directives, though Landon doesn't demonstrate them. Landon strikes the right blend of fear and anger as women struggle to hold onto themselves during an epidemic afflicting women in "Real Women Have Bodies." In "Inventory," Landon's reflective tone mirrors the protagonist's attitude as she recounts people she knew before and after a disease ravages the populace. Fantastical and horrific elements woven throughout these contemporary tales ensure they'll leave an indelible mark on listeners. J.R.T. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 7, 2017
      Machado creates eerie, inventive worlds shimmering with supernatural swerves in this engrossing debut collection. Her stories make strikingly feminist moves by combining elements of horror and speculative fiction with women’s everyday crises. Machado builds entire interior lives through sparse and minor details, turning even litanies of refrigerator contents and free-association on the coming of autumn into memorable meditations on identity and female disempowerment. Queerness permeates these tales, shaping the women and their problems, with a recurring focus on the inherent strangeness of female bodies. These bodies face an epidemic of inexplicable evaporation (“Real Women Have Bodies”), linger as distorted masses beyond weight-loss surgery (“Eight Bites”), or gain the ability to hear the thoughts of actors in porn (“Difficult at Parties”). “The Husband Stitch” makes explicit the hidden sexuality of creepy urban legends. In “Especially Heinous,” Machado rewrites 12 seasons of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, riffing on the titles as she imagines Benson haunted by victims, Stabler beset by domestic drama, and both competing with more efficient doppelgangers. Machado’s slightly slanted world echoes our own in ways that will entertain, challenge, and move readers.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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