Product Description
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.
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.
Reviews/Praise
“Landon's reflective tone mirrors the protagonist's attitude as she recounts people she knew before and after a disease ravages the populace.” —AudioFile
"Machado's debut collection brings together eight stories that showcase her fluency in the bizarre, magical, and sharply frightening depths of the imagination. . . . An exceptional and pungently inventive first book." —Kirkus Starred Review
"[An] engrossing debut collection. . . . Machado’s slightly slanted world echoes our own in ways that will entertain, challenge, and move readers." —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"Machado is the way forward." —Kevin Brockmeier
"Those of us who knew have been waiting for a Carmen Maria Machado collection for years. Her stories show us what we really love and fear." —Alexander Chee
"[Her] stories build and build until they surround and ensnare and at the end you’re always glad to be all tangled up." —NPR
"Machado reveals just how original, subversive, proud and joyful it can be to write from deep in the gut, even—especially—if the gut has been bruised." —Los Angeles Times