After reading the frankly flawless In The Dream House, I knew I had to finally get to this award-winning collection of short stories. They have the dark, fable-like quality that I loved about Dream House, occupying that space where fairy tales (both Grimm and Grimm) enter the adult sphere. Brimming with sexuality and mystery and mixing genres with abandon, Machado weaves her marvellous tales with an underlying sense of dread and anticipation, the sense that something is going on beneath, and it's only a matter of time before the darkness fully emerges.

In particular I enjoyed the Husband Stitch, a tale of a husband's obsession with removing the green ribbon around his wife's neck. Inventory, a gloriously dark take off a woman's sexual encounters during a ravaging plague. Eight Bites, a disturbing, insightful story of extreme dieting and the quest for the "perfect" female form. While I've never seen Law and Order: SVU , Especially Heinous, a series of episode synopses with increasingly bizarre and supernatural events was absolutely brilliant and one of my favourite parts. Machado's transcends genre without losing her very individual voice, binding this collection together in a way that doesn't always happen with short stories. Some were inevitably stronger than others but it's an formidable collection written in clear, lucid, beguiling prose.

I think my favourite was a story in which all women had ribbons around them which they viewed as a special and delicate aspect of themselves but men wanted to untie them. There was one story which focused solely on the TV show Law and Order which I skipped as another reviewer recommended skipping it if you haven't watch the TV show before.

Overall, it was a fairly interesting read but I think I've come to realise that along with graphic novels and comic books, short story collections just aren't for me as they feel a little throwaway and incomplete to me sadly. If you like magical realism and themes around how women are viewed then maybe this collection would be interesting to you but I was a little disappointed unfortunately so much so that I almost DNF'd it a few times.

This was such an empowered collection of feminist short fiction! As with any short story collection, there were stories that appealed to me more than others, but the writing throughout was consistently good and there is definitely something here for everyone. Machado discusses the realm of female bodies and the horror, delight, eroticism, sensuality and power that they both contain and invoke in others. This often makes for uncomfortable reading, but necessary and important for all the right reasons. With subject matter ranging from the 'perfect' marriage, to what it means to be a resident at a writing retreat, from an exploration of post apocalypse to the body horror of surgical weight loss, Machado has crafted a wonderful collection and I will definitely look out for more from her in the future.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book is a bit hit or miss.
Some stories are better than others. Green ribbon has stuck with me though.
Like with all short story collections it's great for train reading.

Loved the first few and last few stories; the ones in the middle dragged for me. At times the stories felt like style over substance - but when they’re good, they’re excellent.

I was a little disappointed in this considering the hype, but it is a debut, so I will certainly read Carmen Maria Machado’s next book.

Delightful, strange, full of guts and feelings, and a profoundly feminist text. I loved this collection. Her Body and Other Parties deals with the lovely, disgusting, heartbreaking, and sometimes traumatic experiences of embodiment--what it means to be a body in the world. And if you like SVU, but can't quite figure out *why,* because it's so much about dead and brutalized women, I think you'll like "Especially Heinous."

3.5 stars.

A collection of surreal, visceral, highly original short stories that are quite unlike anything I've read before. Machado's words are so tangible and full of texture, I was completely absorbed in the language she used to tell her stories. Several of the are quite shocking in the way the brutal way they discuss the strange everyday violence of life - being sick, recovering from major surgery, recovering from an assualt, even having passionate sex.

Certainly these stories are experimental, with varying degrees of success. I found myself riveted by 'Especially Heinous', a surrealist take on Law & Order SVU episode listings, but then it went on for slightly too long. 'The Resident' is, for me, the stand out story in the collection (I am still thinking about it days later), but I was left confused and disorientated by the conclusion. 'The Husband Stitch' is excellent.

I was ultimately left with mixed feelings, slightly deflated by the endings of several of the stories, but there is no denying that Machado is an exciting writer with a sumptuous grasp of language and a plethora of original ideas. I will certianly be keeping an eye out for her future work.

Part of what excites me about reading a debut author’s book is the originality of voice I might discover. The short fiction in “Her Body and Other Parties” by Carmen Maria Machado is so wild and inventive with an impressive variation in structure and subject matter shown from story to story. Often they branch into supernatural or surreal territories where women fade away into the stitching of designer dresses or the spirits of dead prostitutes with bells for eyes haunt a female detective. One story takes place in a post-apocalyptic landscape where the narrator numbers the amount of lovers she’s had, another occurs at a housewarming party that goes awry and one is centred around a clothing shop which seeks to “terrify our patrons into an existential crisis.” But, while this fiction often spills into a wonderful absurdity, I frequently felt an emotional resonance which made it seem very real. Throughout the narrators or characters are disarmingly assertive which gives these tales a confidential and urgent tone: “you may have heard some version of this story before but this is the one you need to know.”

Many of the stories take a different slant on the complications of desire and sex, often describing lesbian affairs or relationships. They also involve complicated ideas about women’s bodies, femininity and the way women present themselves. One that deals with this explicitly is ‘Eight Bites’ where a woman gets “bariatric” surgery in an effort to get thin after all her sisters have already done so. She asks in this “Will I ever be done, transformed into the past tense, or will I always be transforming, better and better until I die?” This is such a fascinating take on the philosophical tension between becoming and being. It’s so exhausting how our lives are frequently concerned with trying to lose weight, get fitter and eat better. Machado has a talent for dredging up all this anxiety which sounds like a low hum throughout our lives. The protagonist of the fable-like ‘The Husband Stitch’ insists that a certain adornment on her body cannot be touched like a private bit of the self that must be preserved and when this is violated she literally comes undone. Another story ‘Real Women Have Bodies’ shows women wilfully melding into designer clothes in a way that seems to provoke questions about the importance we place on fashion and commodities to enhance our sense of self-worth.

I was surprised at how Machado could stir in me feelings of nostalgia with precise descriptions of a thing or sensation I haven’t felt in a long time. For instance, she describes “hard candies twisted in strawberry-patterned cellophane” which I can recall and visualise so precisely as if their colourful wrappers were more exciting than the taste of the candy itself. Or, at one point, a character remembers being a child sitting in front of a humidifier and breathing in the dense mist being pumped out. It’s fascinating how she can use these descriptions to reach back in time to our former selves recognizing in them a more vulnerable or innocent state in our lives. One of the most sombre instances of this is the story ‘The Resident’ where a writer travels to an artists’ residency which happens to be situated on a lake where she spent time as a child camping with a troop of Brownies. Her creative process seems to compel her to physically confront her younger, more awkward self and produces an almost complete breakdown.

As with all the greatest absurd fiction, humour treads closely alongside darker sensations of dread. There are some wickedly funny and original descriptions of people from “a man mean as Mondays” to someone accused of being an “aggressively ordinary woman.” There's also many amusing commentaries on modern life: “Benson is sure that her smartphone is smarter than she is, and finds it deeply upsetting.” Quite often I felt compelled to read on just because I was fascinated to see where she'd take the story next. When it felt like the stories were becoming too ridiculously unhinged I'd come upon a line which felt startlingly heartfelt: “something inside of me is breaking, I am a continent but I will not hold.” Not only does her narrative frequently burst into odd and unfamiliar territory but the form of the story itself is often a revelation. This ranges from instructions that the listener of this tale should cut the reader's hand to the novella ‘Especially Heinous’ which takes the form of episode/season summaries for a supernatural detective television show. Only occasionally did it feel like the stories became so abstract as to be completely alienating like some sections of the stories 'Mothers' and ‘Difficult at Parties’. But, overall, this is a collection filled with such wondrous delights and sharp edges that I revelled in the experience of reading it.

Viseral, vivid, its been a long time since I've read a collection of short stories which made such an impact on me. I've recommended this book to all of my friends - male and female.

This book seemed to start off strong and then go downhill. The first story was really good and held my attention but I found my mind wandering after that. I think it is maybe better as a book to dip in and out of. This is the first time that I had heard of Carmen Maria Machado. Maybe if I had seen some of her other work I would have liked the stories in the book more.

Sometimes you come to a book because you have heard so much about it that it becomes impossible to avoid. I often try to do so anyway, until the hype dies down and I can actually enjoy it naturally, without ridiculous expectations. I do the same for movies, which is why I still refuse to watch Easy A. The same was happening with Her Body And Other Parties, only that I was intrigued by its premise that I still went for it. As a consequence I had pretty high expectations of Machado, and she managed to meet each and every single one of them. Thanks to Serpent's Tail and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I adored this collection. There is simply no other way of putting it. What I adore about short story collections is how they allow authors the space to explore different topics, writing styles etc. while uniting them under a single theme or idea. Her Body and Other Parties does this beautifully. From the very first story, Machado turns a sharp eye to the female body and all that affects it. Growing up female often means that you grow up torn, constantly questioning and doubting your body and how it looks. Why is your hair like that? Why are your legs not thinner? How dare you wear a bikini if you're not skinny? What I myself have realised over time is that it takes very long before you actually come to appreciate your body, its strength and power. In Her Body and Other Parties Machado looks at the female body from different angles, at its ability to create life, to feel love and lust, to be used and abused, to house a fragile mind. She truly does something unique here and I will be returning to this collection often.

The stories in Her Body and Other Parties are stunning. From the first tale, 'The Husband Stitch', Machado drags you into the world of women's bodies and the tales these tell. In a sense 'The Husband Stitch' is the best example of that, as the narrator chronicles her life with her husband and the mystery of the ribbon around her neck, while relating tales she has heard of other women. There is a mystical suspense to the story which consistently leaves the reader with a sense of unease and fear, yet also a desperate desire to know, to look into the darkness and confront what you find there. This feeling continues throughout all the stories, whether it's the tragically lyrical 'Mothers' or the horrifying 'Eight Bites'.The collection's last story, 'Difficult at Parties' is a perfect finale for Her Body and Other Parties, combining Machado's clear-eyed observations, a sense of lurking unease, and a revelation that feels like a punch in the throat.

Carmen Maria Machado weaves magic with her words in Her Body and Other Parties. Usually I don't like it when blurbs draw connections between new authors and well-established "Greats" because it sets unfair and impossible expectations. In this case, however, those comparisons are completely justified. I was struck by how much the spirit of Her Body and Other Parties did indeed remind me of Angela Carter. Not because of its theme or topics, but because of the bravado and inventiveness with which Machado writes. These stories are a tour-de-force, each taking a different approach, working with a different style, and yet bringing home its point with a gentle forcefulness. You have a story like 'The Husband Stitch' which is filled with little asides, instructing readers how to "perform" certain emotions and events in case they're reading the story out loud. There is 'Especially Heinous', one of my personal favourites, which reads like an episode guide for Law & Order: SVU but with completely new and wildly outrageous stories. 'The Resident' feels like a psychological thriller, while 'Inventory' configures itself both as a memoir of relationships as well as a dystopian story. And throughout it all Machado's writing is sharp and precise, ranging between beautifully descriptive and provocatively uncanny.


Her Body and Other Stories has so much to offer to a reader willing to dive in, no holds barred. Each story will throw up a different question to which there is perhaps no immediate answer. But that is what good books are supposed to do, make you wonder and doubt, reassess and discover. Her Body and Other Stories will make an incredible addition to anyone's bookshelf!

I loved Her Body and Other Parties and for once think that the hype is completely justified. There are not enough words to praise this collection and what it tries to do. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to be surprised and shocked, engaged and horrified, provoked and soothed. GO READ THIS BOOK!

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, has marked her out as an effervescent talent in fermentation.

Her gorgeously lubricious, fantastically deranged, genre-twisting stories explore women’s bodies and the physical violence all too frequently visited upon them. Her narratives are strewn with surreal situations masquerading as humdrum lives, and many of her characters are propelled into states of half lunacy by their circumstances.

Machado’s feminal leitmotifs progress from tales of bariatric surgery and outbreaks of a fading disease to a woman’s terrifying struggle to keep her sanity in the wake of a brutal attack. Nothing in these clever little fables is ever quite as it seems – and there is invariably a sinister something lurking just beyond our range of vision.

Her language is pleasingly inventive throughout. In The Resident, her protagonist describes a woman’s dress as a “shapeless frock whose fractal pattern spiralled dozens of holes into her torso and created in me immediate anxiety.”

Machado’s style won’t appeal to everyone – especially those who insist upon neat endings to their short fiction. Nevertheless, I feel sure there will be plenty readers delighted by such virtuoso storytelling.

I look forward to the publication of House in Indiana, Machado’s forthcoming memoir, due to be published by Graywolf Press in 2019.

Fantastically magical, and a challenging read that really got me thinking. Short story writing at it's best and weirdest.

One of my favourite books of 2017, these extraordinarily vivid and visceral short stories come from the American writer, Carmen Maria Machado who lives with her wife in Philadelphia. She’s been widely published in magasines and anthologies, but this debut collection demonstrates her dizzying ability in both storytelling and language. It’s not surprising it was shortlisted for the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FICTION PRIZE 2017.
These stories have a strong vein of dark humour, but it’s difficult to categorise Machado’s style as each story if so completely different from the previous one. Sometimes disturbing, gothic or erotic (like a contemporary Angela Carter), what links them all is the relationship between women and their bodies; how women are treated by men and by love between women. In one story a writers’ retreat goes horribly wrong; in another women’s relationship with clothes is taken to the extreme and women become part of the clothes. In another the youngest sister in a family finally opts for gastric band surgery and is haunted by the ghost of her former self, gurgling underneath the floorboards.
If the stories can’t be categorised, the language certainly can: precise, fresh, inventive and utterly new, with original and startling images. In The Husband Stitch Machado dissects the role of women in folk tales and stories and tells us: Brides never fare well in stories. Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle. The story, Difficult at parties has a killer first line: Afterwards, there is no kind of quiet like the one that is in my head. Paul brings me home from the hospital in his ancient Volvo. In The resident a sinister atmosphere is evoked in a description of the entrance to the hotel: the wood curled in organic tendrils from where the doors met, like an octopus emerging arms and suckers first from a hiding place. In Mothers a woman leans in to a mirror to put on mascara, the amoeba of her breath growing and shrinking. This technique of defamiliarisation works particularly well in creating the strange and threatening worlds of Machado’s fiction.
These stories may often be dark and even disturbing, but they are literary horror of the highest order, defying expectations of what short fiction ‘should’ be. Ultimately this collection is a joyous celebration of lesbian relationships and of the strength of women to overcome misogyny. By the end of this ground-breaking collection I’d challenge anyone to disagree with the assertion that: It is my right to reside in my own mind. Which should be a basic human right, certainly the right of any woman and of course, of any author. As the narrator of the first story says: This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them.
Carmen Maria Machado tweets at https://twitter.com/carmenmmachado

I have never in my life read a collection of stories quite like this. It blew my tiny mind. Masterfully mixing different genres Machado’s stories blend magical realism, horror, sci fi and comedy into tales that are as relatable as they are fantastical. The re-imagining of the tv show Law and Order SVU (my favourite show) as a modern gothic horror-fantasy was as intriguing as it was mind-boggling. The re-imagining of the classic tale of the green ribbon was erotic and tragic, it is well placed as the first story in the collection as it demands the readers attention immediately and sets the tone for the rest of the book. I loved them all but if I had to pick a favourite it would be Inventory, the story of a woman recounting her sexual encounters against the backdrop of an apocalyptic plague. Her writing is poetic and caustic, queer and frantic, beautiful and otherworldly. Give this book to all your friends, they need to know about it.

I read 4 out of 8 stories, skipping over the endless Law and Order, SVU one, which felt to me like pure filler. Machado writes bizarre mash-ups of fairy tales and urban legends, most notably in the first story, “The Husband Stitch.” My favorite of the four I read was “Mothers,” about queer family-making and the abuse that lurks under the surface of so many relationships. I loved “Bad” and “Mara” (bitterness) as character names, the random Midwest setting, and the quirky metaphors (“she was seared into my time line, unchangeable as Pompeii”; “my joints feel like the fat rubber bands used to bind broccoli”). This author is absurdly good at lists, all through “Inventory” and in the shrine to queer icons in “Mothers.” But all of her stories go on too long and would no doubt be punchier if shortened. Not a book for me, but one I’d recommend to others who’d appreciate the edgy feminist bent.

Her Body & Other Parties is a book of incisive short stories that combine bodies, sex and relationships, horror, science fiction, and pressing issues in imaginative ways. The main characters are mostly women, living in uncanny worlds that can be apocalyptic, magical, and/or unnervingly almost real. In one, the truth about a dress shop and the women slowly going incorporeal drives an employee away from the store. In another, the ribbon around a woman’s neck becomes a mysterious focus in a story that highlights the act of telling stories and of the sounds of telling them aloud. Others play with structure—an inventory of sex that depicts a virus epidemic across the globe, a story told using Law & Order: SVU episode titles—or with common issues like dieting and motherhood, in ways that rethink how these things can be considered.

To describe the stories doesn’t quite do justice to the freshness and imagination of the collection, not only in the ideas and the blending of magical realism, sci-fi, horror, and the reality of life, but in the way they are written. The writing style is distinctive, creating atmosphere and digging deep into the female protagonists. These women have varied relationships with their bodies, different dynamics with their male and/or female lovers, assorted pasts and futures, but what unites them all is the way their stories are both real and surreal.

Some of the stories will likely have a greater effective on different people—as someone who actually thought the acronym was SUV, the Law & Order structured one passed me by quite massively—but this is an important collection. The stories do exciting things with ideas and writing, and the use of the uncanny and the monstrous to highlight issues particularly around women’s bodies and sexualities is creative and thought provoking.

Her Body and Other Parties is a deeply impactful read and the stories within it are certain to stay with the reader for a long time after they close its pages. It actually reminded me quite a bit of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, as this is the only other book that has left me feeling this kind of way - is it hollow, is it horrified? I really don't know.
The first story, The Husband Stitch, is the one that resonated the most with me out of all of the ones included, which I think was aided by the fact that it struck me as a modern-day version of the folklore tale of Melusine. In the tale that first appeared in the mid-to-late 1300, Melusine is a water spirit whose only request to her husband is to be left alone every month to bathe, whereas in Carmen Maria Machado’s The Husband Stitch, the woman's only wish is for her husband not to touch the ribbon tied around her neck. Both men fail at fulfilling the desire and I can’t help but wonder what that says about how much the ownership of women’s bodies, as well as the relationship between men and women, has changed in nearly 700 years. I’ll leave that for you to decide.
The other successes of the collection are Inventory, Real Women Have Bodies, Eight Bites, and Difficult at Parties but, like the majority of short story anthologies it played a host to a couple of weaker stories. Mothers, one of the earliest in the collection, is one whose point went completely over my head. Honestly, I have re-read it around four times now and, though the writing is absolutely gorgeous, I still do not have the foggiest clue about what the majority of the tale is about. But, by far, the biggest disappointed was Especially Heinous, otherwise known as the Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit story and the one that I actually went into Her Body and Other Parties dying to read.
Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love crime shows - Criminal Minds, Bones, but SVU especially. My grandma and I have actually managed the mammoth task of watching every single episode of the show’s mammoth 19 seasons, but that did not mean that this story made anymore sense to me. Honestly, it was a major disappointed and actually read a quite a lot like fan fiction, which is something I mention primarily because of the story’s choice to romantically pair Olivia up with both the DA and Stabler (both of which have been shipped heavily by fans of the show) at various points in this mishmash of episode synopses.
Overall, this was an incredibly thought-provoking and sometimes rather harrowing, collection of stories and one that, no matter whether I understood what was going on or not, let me feeling some kind of way. Carmen Maria Machado’s voice is rich and haunting and unique, and one that I definitely want to hear more from in the future.

"Do you ever worry," she asked me, "that you're the madwoman in the attic?"


I find short stories to be incredibly fascinating, because they can be a great insight into a writer and the way they approach certain topics. Unlike novels, short stories allow for more concise narratives, for things to be intense in completely different ways. They're also much easier to fit into my busy schedule, as I can read one and then set the book aside and not feel I'm going to lose context when I go back to it. On top of this, Her Body and Other Parties is touted as a feminist work of fiction, so I was genuinely excited to get through this, particularly in the first few stories, some of which featured queer characters.

Machado isn't afraid to look at women even when they're not 'perfect'. The women of this collection feel human, they can be unreasonable and selfish, they want and have sex and their approach to love can feel as neurotic and as disconnected as the one of men. The fact that the collection starts with The Husband Stitch is nothing short of magnificent, because that story is absolutely amazing and I couldn't get enough of it. It's a retelling of "The Green Ribbon", a story you shouldn't read before reading Machado's (because it spoils the ending somewhat) and it touches on the ways in which men find they have almost a right to women's bodies. It's a story that absolutely chilled me, because so much of the narrator's experience is so similar to the stories I and my friends have gone through. It was touching and at times revolting and angering, which I feel was entirely the intention here.

From there we move into Inventory (a woman recounts all the people she's slept with as an apocalyptic plague sweeps the land) and Mothers, a strange tale with an air of domestic abuse about it. The former I enjoyed, but the latter, despite some striking passages (like the one below), was just a bit strange, the format just... confusing.

What I say: "Why did you leave her with me?" What I want to say: "This almost broke me, but it didn't. It made me stronger than before. You have made me better. Thank you. I will love you until the end of time."


Unfortunately, we then move into the absolute worst story of the lot and the one that single-handedly managed to knock a star and a half rating off this book (I was prepared, at that point, to give this 5 stars, hands down). Especially Heinous is an absurd retelling of the first 12 seasons of Law and Order: SVU, but with a whole bunch of weirdness chucked in. 272 episodes (retold as vignettes) of a series I've literally never seen before, but with added junk around characters, weird stuff that never went anywhere (though the girls with bells for eyes were admittedly creepy) and I absolutely couldn't care. It's just such a weird placement for it and I do feel that, had it been the last story in the collection, I would have skimmed through it/skipped it altogether. Now, I get that Machado is an American author and all, but before that point, her stories displayed a universal quality about them. This was just tedious and self-indulgent. What, exactly, was it supposed to convey? Misery?

The rest of the stories don't come quite close to the brilliance of The Husband Stitch. In Real Women Have Bodies, something strange is happening in a dress shop as women increasingly start to fade away. It's perhaps my favourite of this secondary lot because it felt like it could almost touch the brilliance of the first story (though not quite). This was a quote that both made me immediately want to highlight it and also perhaps flip tables:

They are talking about how we can't trust the faded women, women who can't be touched but can stand on the earth, which means they must be lying about something, they must be deceiving us, somehow. "I don't trust anything that can be incorporeal and isn't dead," one of them says.


Does that sound familiar?

The final couple of stories are also quotable, but I didn't find myself identifying as much with the narrator as in the original ones. In Eight Bites, Machado has an incisive look at weight and self-esteem, through a woman who decides to have bariatric surgery. It tugged at my heartstrings in all the right ways, at least to begin with, but then lost me as it tried its hand at magical realism and completely lost its way. Even though the line I quote below really struck me, right in the solar plexus, I wish it had ended differently, I wish it had carried through its momentum. It felt like it promised so much more and then fizzled out like a deflated balloon.

Even though I thought I was fat I wasn't; the teenager in those photos is very beautiful, in a wistful kind of way.


Finally, the last two stories of the collection; The Resident follows a writer who goes to an artist retreat and seems to slowly start losing her mind and Difficult at Parties, about a woman who deals with a sexual assault through porn. The former story is where the quote from the top of the review came from and again, although it had a strong start, it lost me by the end and I didn't really care for the ending much at all. It tries to take you on a magical journey between reality and not but... it feels really sterile. The second story is harrowing and again, I enjoyed the ending, but the sterility was too prominent. There was no emotional connection for me to latch on to, nothing to keep me wanting to read on.

Overall, I think having collections like Her Body and Other Parties is a valuable thing, because Machado does bring a great perspective. Not all stories resonated with me, but that's entirely a me issue, not an issue with the book. Would I still recommend it? Absolutely. To the right audience, I feel this could be a much more interesting read than I was for me.

An intriguing collection of stories which I liked but didn't love. They are often fantasy with a feminist slant, and I must say I found the relentlessly negative perspective rather depressing. I really enjoyed the description but often found the characters lacking and a bit empty. I also struggled with the story about SVU - perhaps it's easier to follow if you are familiar with the show, but it went on far too long for me and I lost interest. Nevertheless, on the whole this is definitely an interesting book and is one I would recommend to book groups, as I think it would be sure to provoke lots of discussion and different interpretations.