Her Body and Other Parties
Ratings200
Average rating3.8
Contains spoilers
Summary: This short story is told by an unnamed female narrator, who details the development of her relationship with her eventual husband from their meeting, through their courtship, marriage, and birth of their son, all the way to its end. Throughout the tale, the narrator has a mysterious green ribbon tied around her neck, and, as her relationship with her husband progresses, so does his fascination with the ribbon. This narrative is a feminist take on the urban-legend-turned-children’s-story “The Green Ribbon.”
I'm not usually one for anthologies but I'd heard too many good things about this book to not give it a try.
I felt like I was reading a Black Mirror episode with every story in the best way possible.
We started off strong, hit a bit of a bump in the middle but ended pretty well.
As a whole I would say I enjoyed this collection.
Below is a detailed “review” and rating for each of the stories with spoilers.
The Husband Stitch: 4 stars. How bizarre of a story. It elicited so much emotion for being as vague as it was. I felt my pulse quickening, my stomach dropping. While involving the fantastical elements of a world that's just slightly different than ours all of the stories our main character tells us still feel so realistic. The selfishness of her husband, the fixation on her ribbon, the blatant disrespect of her wishes, the very evident connection and illusion to consent, of how men take what is not theirs to be taken. I'm left confused as to what the ribbons in varying locations of the body indicate, but the metaphor of the ribbon as a whole was beautifully done.
Inventory: 4.5 stars. This has no right being as good as it was for how short it was. We're literally just going through each of our main characters sexual partners throughout her life. But it's such a beautiful slice of life into those most intimate experiences I don't know if I like the virus aspect more or less than I might have had I read this when it was originally teleased in 2017 before the Covid outbreak. I actually had to check the publication year because I thought they were referencing Covid. It just makes it hit that much harder though now that we have had that experience.
Mothers: 2 Stars This one wasn't for me. It left me confused and not in a good way like The Husband Stitch. I still don't know what was happening or what it meant and while the writing was still flowery and beautiful it felt like almost too much.
Especially Heinous: 3.5 Stars Love the concept, little episode summaries that collectively tell a story. Law and Order SVU meets Twilight Zone. The doppelgänger situation was kind of meh for me but I actually loved that all of the victims wound up in Benson's head telling her how to help them find peace. That was really freaking cool. Also I looked up the real SVU episodes and they're all the same in the book. Including some of the same plots which I thought was cool. It got a bit sluggish in the middle and I found myself counting how much longer we had to go. I understand that we're doing every episode in what was 12 seasons (at the time) but it started to drag after awhile. But at the end it picked up again for me and I liked the end of it.
Real Women Have Bodies: 3 Stars This one was just real fucking sad. It made me think of couples where one of them has cancer and is slowly withering away. It was just heartbreaking. And on a deeper level so meaningful and terrifying g that women are just randomly fading away and no one knows why or even really cares. Because that's just how society would be if there was something that actually caused our female population to randomly wither away. Most of them wouldn't give a shit and wouldn't try to fix it.
Eight Bites: 4 Stars I don't know how to put my thoughts into words about this one. I just loved the message of how even when you hate your body she still loves you. Like our bodies are so amazing with all the things they can do and no matter how much we may dislike what we see when we look in the mirror are body still keeps doing everything she needs to do to keep us alive. She keeps us going no matter how awful we are to her. Until one day she cannot keep going anymore and that apology at the end was like a knife to the heart. Our bodies deserve so much more love than we can ever give them.
The Resident: 3.75 Stars I am a sucker for camp and retreat stories. I eat them up. So this was right up my alley. And it had me. Until the end. I didn't like the ambiguous ending. I didn't quite get it. I have theories that our main character was never actually married, she was actually insane after all and had stalked this woman she thought was her wife. But then it all just ended, so abruptly without explanation.
Difficult at Parties: 3.5 Stars This one was also confusing. But I think I understood what it was trying to say. Maybe it's up for interpretation and I just interpreted it a certain way? But it made it impactful for me. Seeing our main character truly become a shell of herself was truly heart breaking.
my favorite novel ever. “The Husband Stitch” lives inside me, it is so so amazing. I also really really really loved “body image” my god. Everyone, espically every lesbian needs to read this book.
Very good read! I picked it out because I always find short story collections easier to get through, and I was not disappointed. The use of psychological and fantastical realism was expertly done, never giving enough away until just the right moment.
A lot of braincells are needed to consume this. Not an easy read for sure.
“defamiliarization; of zooming in so close to something, and observing it so slowly, that it begins to warp, and change, and acquire new meaning”
I read this short story collection for a women's literature class but have been wanting to read it for a few years now. This was my first venture into horror, but I did enjoy it. It was very well written and some of the stories really took an unexpected turn. I genuinely enjoyed reading Her Body and Other Parties!
Favourite were the Resident and the Husband Stitch! All stories were great though, we covered Real Women Have Bodies in my short story group <3
heavy on the metaphors + has an eerie/haunting energy to a lot of the stories. can be quite graphic and explicit at times. but also vague and implicit at times too. really enjoyed the retelling of ‘the girl with the green ribbon' (the husband stitch). inventory was a bit wicked but i also liked it. eight bites and difficult at parties were standouts too.
Spoiler
“I will curl into her body, which was my body once, but I was a poor caretaker and she was removed from my charge.”
“It's like you're not even in there. He grabs the sides of his arms. You're responding to all the wrong things. Please stop, I say. He reaches for me, but I knock his hand away. I need you to be simple and good, I say. Can't you just be simple and good? He looks straight through me, as if I already know the answer.”
2.5.stars
I really thought I was going to love this but sadly not.
A couple of the stories were well done - The Husband Stitch and Real Women Have Bodies - but the rest were either straight over my head or just not interesting to read/listen to (Especially Heinous, jeez
I enjoyed some of the short stories, but others were just...boring? Maybe I don't understand surrealism.
read for the tarot readathon 2023: the fool
this is such a though provoking vollection and the themes literally mean the world to me but something about the way this was told just did not connect with me. honeslty i'm going to reread the stories because i feel like maybe it's me
Lost A LOT of momentum with the “Especially Heinous” story and never fully recovered from it.
This short story collection will take you on a wild ride. These stories are a mix of horror, magical realism, and fantasy and if you aren't a fan of those elements, you may not enjoy this collection. These stories are beautifully written and Machado creates gorgeous tapestries from her writing and characters. I think this is a collection I'll revisit in the future.
Notable stories: “Real Women Have Bodies,” “The Resident,” “Difficult at Parties”
In this collection of short stories, Carmen Maria Machado takes things that many people are familiar with—love, anxiety, sex, death, marriage, Law & Order: SVU—and adds a backdrop of horror. Like an adult version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, this book is made up of several stories that aren't explicitly terrifying but still have the ability to creep you out. For the most part, each story begins with a pretty mild premise and devolves into surreal body horror.
A lot of reviews on here mention Especially Heinous as being the worst story, but I think it'll be one of those love/hate type things in the long run. I honestly loved it. For me, the first couple entries had me wondering what I was getting myself into. I even thought about skipping the story about halfway through season 1 until the girls with bells for eyes showed up. From then on, the story became one of the most surreal things I've ever read. I don't want to give too much away, but I really loved the way everything played out.
Overall, I really enjoyed Machado's writing style and I'm looking forward to reading more. My only complaints are that she relied on cliches quite a bit and the stories were a little formulaic in that they almost all ended with questioning if anything actually happened. However, this had some of the most unique writing and voice I've experienced in years. Can't wait to read some full-length novels.
This is exactly what I like feminist horror filled with metaphors. It's a damn shame that one of the middle stories drags on for way too long and was an absolute punishment to finish
Gripping, original, haunting, and brilliant. All of the stories stood strongly on their own and pulled me in instantly, although the resident was my favourite. Definitely one to re-read, 4.5 stars
“He wanted to go down on me, but I didn't want him to. He got angry and left, slamming the screen door so hard my spice rack jumped from its nail and crashed to the floor. My dog lapped up the nutmeg, and I had to force-feed him salt to make him throw up. Revved from adrenaline, I made a list of animals I have had in my life—seven, including my two betta fish, who died within a week of each other when I was nine—and a list of the spices in pho. Cloves, cinnamon, star anise, coriander, ginger, cardamom pods.”
Reminiscent of [b:Friday Black 37570595 Friday Black Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519263290l/37570595.SY75.jpg 59181816], and I realize it's unfair of me to say that because Her Body is the earlier work. What I mean is the gimmick: the stories all take place in a reality eversoslightly off-center from ours, recognizable yet alarming. It's an ingenious and effective device: Machado's matter-of-fact depiction of daily misogyny, and that world's casual acceptance thereof, shines a spotlight on the injustices that our world turns a blind eye to.The stories are hit or miss, but in reading my friends' reviews I was delighted to find differences of opinion in which was which. Delighted, because it means thoughtful conversations lie ahead from which I may learn.
Unforgettable and truly terrifying. This is modern female gothic at its very best. Excited to read more of her work.
had a similar experience to most where the stories i enjoyed were really quite good and made me think in all the good ways, and then there were the rest...
Whenever I genuinely pick up a book with a feeling of “Oh this is going to be perfect for me” I'm seemingly proved wrong more often than right.