Reviews with content warning for Rape - Her Body and Other Parties

A strong collection of short stories. My favorites were “The Husband Stitch”, “Eight Bites”, “Real Women Have Bodies” and “The Resident”. I love how the stories feel both ethereal and grounded.

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apolloann's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

3.0

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tillydaisym's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

3.0

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amylav's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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taylorsevalia's review

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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capsandclauses's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Average Rating: 2.5 Stars

Average CAWPILE: 5.192

“I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.”

After reading a few short stories for a Contemporary Literature university class, I found myself falling in love with the genre again. Her Bodies and Other Parties is a short story collection by Carmen Maria Machado that has achieved a lot of attention and acclaim lately, so I thought it would be a good choice to reintroduce myself to the genre.

Before I get into individual stories, I want to address a few things about this collection. The stories inside it are confusing, illogical, horrific and bluntly sexually explicit. Even if you don’t understand or enjoy them, most of them will leave you feeling extremely uneasy. They comment upon our attitudes towards our bodies, sex, and the construction of society.

I also want to give a trigger warning disclaimer. DO NOT even go near this collection if any of the following things trigger you: explicit sex, sexual assault, eating disorders, body insecurity, body, horror, domestic violence and child abuse.

So onto the individual stories:

The Husband Stitch

Rating: 3.25

CAWPILE: 6.214

A loose retelling of a campfire story called ‘The Green Ribbon’ (of which I am completely unfamiliar with), The Husband Stitch follows a women who has had a green sash tied around her neck her entire life and her interactions with the men it. It’s an extremely surreal magical realism story that is equally poetic and horrific, though I pretty much predicted the ending from the beginning of the story. A couple things did throw me off: the unnecessarily graphic sex (though I guess it made sense given the literary intepretations of the story) and inserted reader directions threw me out of the tale, while the rest of the story sounded straight out of the Brothers Grimm.

Inventory

Rating: 2.5 Stars

CAWPILE: 4.857

This story is exactly that: an inventory of the sexual encounters of the protagonist across her life, set against the background of the developing pandemic. One thing I really appreciated is that the pandemic was a casual setting for the story to take place in, but made the narrative feel extremely dystopian and apocalyptic. It’s a story about sexual exploration and the search for connection, but the narrator bluntly recalls every instance of sex in a jarring clinical tone. After a while, it became a bit too repetitive for me, but I certainly appreciated the manipulation of form.

Mothers

Rating: 1.75 Stars

CAWPILE: 3.714

This story was confusing as hell. I honestly still couldn’t tell you what it was about. A women whose abusive relationship leaves her with a baby she never wanted? Someone going crazy? I think the instances of domestic violence were actually quite well written, but this story honestly just made me feel like I was stupid, which is not an experience I want to have while reading.

Especially Heinous

Rating: 0.75 Stars

CAWPILE: 1.571

This story is actually the reason I went for this collection. The premise was just so, so interesting to me, but I was so, so disappointed by its execution. Especially Heinous is a play on a tv show I grew up watching, Law and Order: SVU. In it, Carmen Maria Machado takes the episode titles of every episode from the first twelve seasons of the show and crafts plot summaries around them, adding them together to form a little story. There was so much potential in this, but at the end of the day, there really wasn’t a story. The episodes just felt erratic and wild; clones, kidnapping, various sexual relationships? It was just too much. I also think twelve seasons was a little too long – this is the longest story in the collection, and after about 10 pages I was ready to move on.

Real Women Have Bodies

Rating: 3.75 Stars

CAWPILE: 7.25

My favourite story in the collection. Real Women Have Bodies follows a young woman working at a fashion store as she discovers the sinister reality behind their most popular dresses. Set in a darkly horrific world, where women are slowly becoming incorporeal (metaphor for eating disorders?), this short story was deeply disturbing and interesting. This made me think, and scared me a little as well.

Eight Bites

Rating: 3.25 Stars

CAWPILE: 6.643

Another magical realism story, Eight Bites follows a women who gets a gastric bypass surgery and is haunted by the mass she shed. This one was really interesting to me in that I liked its commentary on generational trauma and inherited self esteem issues, but I also think it was a tad judgy of women who get the surgery in real life. As someone whose mother has had the surgery, I resonate with the daughters attitudes towards it (if you hate your body, do you hate mine) but also know that there are a myriad of reasons why people get a sleeve and I feel like this oversimplifies it a little. I did like the way the title wove into the text though, and it made me think.

The Resident

Rating: 2.5 Stars

CAWPILE: 5.214

The Resident follows a woman who drives out to a place from her childhood to participate in an artistic residency. Throughout the story, its impossible to tell whether the narrator is seeing what is happening, or if the story is taking place entirely in her mind. Its creepy and haunting and I enjoyed it quite a lot, even if I had no idea what was going on.

Difficult at Parties

Rating: 3 Stars

CAWPILE: 6.071

This was the only story that really hit me emotionally and one of the only ones without magical realism as well. It follows a woman who develops a porn addiction after coming home from a sexual assault and the breakdown of her relationship. Its blunt and hard-hitting.

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Overall, I didn’t mind this collection, but I suspect that there are definitely better ones out there. I would be interested in reading this author’s memoir and comparing it to the short story collection. Maybe her style works better in longer form?

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