I’ve come across a couple of these short stories before in other collections and o remember loving them when I read them before so it’s been fantastic to be able to read a whole collection by Carmen Maria Machado. These stories are a brilliantly written blend of magical realism and horror with settings and situations just recognisable enough to be all the more unsettling. My particular favourites were Inventory and Especially Heinous but each story is a masterpiece!

An imaginative engagement with the vexed relationships men, culture and women themselves have with our female bodies. There's a nice variety in these stories but, taken collectedly, they feel less original, less startling, less innovative than I expected.

The themes of violence perpetrated both against women (The Husband Stitch, Especially Heinous) and by women against themselves (Eight Bites) are important, of course, but these stories never pushed me or challenged me in any way.

The writing is fine, lightly hallucinogenic at times as genres spillover into each other - and Inventory is clever as a list of a woman's sexual encounters allows another wider (and increasingly popular story) to spill through.

An interesting collection but not one that I'd revisit as the stories are easily digested first time round.