Her Body and Other Parties
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Description
"[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange."-Roxane Gay
"In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories and hunger and desire. I couldn't put it down."-Karen Russell
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.
Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
Book Information
Posts
Oft erwarten wir von Romanen eine eindeutige Botschaft, doch diese acht Erzählungen zeichnet gerade das Uneindeutige aus. Die Autorin erzählt von Gefährdungen und Zurichtungen, Begehren und Lust, und all das aus einer queeren Perspektive. So richtig weiß ich nicht, wie ich dieses Buch bewerten soll, aber ich denke ständig darüber nach und das ist auch eine Kunst für sich.
Story No.1 The Husband Itch - 5/5 stars Story no. 2 Inventory - 4/5 Story no. 3 Mothers - no rating (had to skip because of baby content) Story no 4 especially heinous - 5/5 Story no. 5 Real women have bodies 5/5 Story no. 6 Eight bites 4/5 Story no. 7 Resident 3/5 Story no. 8 Difficult at Parties 4/5 I felt like these stories were all very uncomfortable in a very good way. If that makes sense...
This review is very difficult since I don't really know what to think about this. While I was reading most of the stories, I was maximum confused and it was difficult to understand some things so I had to reread whole passages. But after reading the whole collection and thinking about it, I have to admit that I had a really good time, some made me cry some left me absolutely confused but I think that's what the author was going for. The topics that are being adressed in here are very important and make you think about yourself and your view on bodies and sexuality.
I really would have wished to give this five stars. The author´s writing style and the tone she creates are marvellous and I saved about a dozen quotes to think about again later on. Unfortunately, two or three of the stories in this book weren´t for me at all and I cannot say that i fully understood all of the others. Regardless, I highly recommend picking this up.
3.5 stars I'm not really sure how I feel about this book, since there are some stories that I could just not get into at all, especially the one called "Especially Heinous", which was just a recap of 12 seasons of Law & Order SUV. Not really sure what the point of that one was. However, my favourite stories were "Difficult At Parties" and "The Resident". The former really got to me since it was about a woman dealing with the aftermaths of sexual assault. Overall I'd say this is an okay read, but you'd might like some of the stories more than the others.
Description
"[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange."-Roxane Gay
"In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories and hunger and desire. I couldn't put it down."-Karen Russell
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.
Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
Book Information
Posts
Oft erwarten wir von Romanen eine eindeutige Botschaft, doch diese acht Erzählungen zeichnet gerade das Uneindeutige aus. Die Autorin erzählt von Gefährdungen und Zurichtungen, Begehren und Lust, und all das aus einer queeren Perspektive. So richtig weiß ich nicht, wie ich dieses Buch bewerten soll, aber ich denke ständig darüber nach und das ist auch eine Kunst für sich.
Story No.1 The Husband Itch - 5/5 stars Story no. 2 Inventory - 4/5 Story no. 3 Mothers - no rating (had to skip because of baby content) Story no 4 especially heinous - 5/5 Story no. 5 Real women have bodies 5/5 Story no. 6 Eight bites 4/5 Story no. 7 Resident 3/5 Story no. 8 Difficult at Parties 4/5 I felt like these stories were all very uncomfortable in a very good way. If that makes sense...
This review is very difficult since I don't really know what to think about this. While I was reading most of the stories, I was maximum confused and it was difficult to understand some things so I had to reread whole passages. But after reading the whole collection and thinking about it, I have to admit that I had a really good time, some made me cry some left me absolutely confused but I think that's what the author was going for. The topics that are being adressed in here are very important and make you think about yourself and your view on bodies and sexuality.
I really would have wished to give this five stars. The author´s writing style and the tone she creates are marvellous and I saved about a dozen quotes to think about again later on. Unfortunately, two or three of the stories in this book weren´t for me at all and I cannot say that i fully understood all of the others. Regardless, I highly recommend picking this up.
3.5 stars I'm not really sure how I feel about this book, since there are some stories that I could just not get into at all, especially the one called "Especially Heinous", which was just a recap of 12 seasons of Law & Order SUV. Not really sure what the point of that one was. However, my favourite stories were "Difficult At Parties" and "The Resident". The former really got to me since it was about a woman dealing with the aftermaths of sexual assault. Overall I'd say this is an okay read, but you'd might like some of the stories more than the others.