Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Here are girls: girls who have become mothers too soon and are doubtful of their abilities in ‘Mothers’ girls with dead-end jobs, and student loan debt, fighting against their limited options and wondering, at the same time, why they should bother in ‘Real Women Have Bodies’. In these eight stories, all written from a female perspective, all invoking supernatural elements with obvious antecedents in Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson, Machado roams a landscape at once familiar and brutally weird. And Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, although admirably stylish and original, does prompt feeling above all else. But it’s difficult to write coldly, in the precise language of criticism, about a book that provokes a personal, emotional response. If I write about a book with affection I worry I’m, consciously or unconsciously, revealing something about myself – that I have good taste or bad taste, troubling obsessions, a sympathy towards those who are undeserving of it, that I’m insensitive or incapable of intellectual thought – and I have no interest in revealing anything about myself. It’s less exhausting, it gives me an opportunity to say something sharp, if not mean it certainly takes less time – you can dismiss something in one short, swift action. I’m reluctant to admit this but it’s often easier for me to write about a book I hated rather than a book I loved. Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Her Body and Other Parties’

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado