Her Body and Other Parties - Carmen Maria Machado

AUTHOR: Carmen Maria Machado

GENRE: Speculative Short Story Collection

PUBLICATION DATE: October 3, 2017

RATING: Can't decide!

In a Nutshell: Might make a good story collection for the right reader, but not for me. It went a bit too meandering and surreal for my taste.

I had chanced upon one story by this author, an amazing tale titled ‘The Husband Stitch’ and also the first story in this collection, a couple of years ago on the Granta site. Having been impressed with it, I looked up the author on Goodreads and discovered this debut collection. But after reading it, I feel like I should have stopped after that first experience. Let's be clear: she's not a bad writer at all, but her writing isn't for me.

There’s no disputing the creativity of the storylines. The eight stories in this book transcend several fantastical genres, delving into sci-fi, surrealism, fantasy, comedy, horror, and psychological fiction. However, what connects each of them is the strong thread of feminine power. Every single story has a woman who knows her needs, including sexual desires. This makes the book feel almost like a darker feminist narrative. Some of the tales even experiment with structure. For instance, the almost-novella-length ‘Especially Heinous’ is presented as a reimagined version of the TV show ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’, spread over twelve seasons with twenty-four episodes in each. It's quite an ambitious endeavour!

However, regardless of the outstanding imaginativeness in the narratives, they didn’t work for me as they weren’t my cup of tea for various reasons. I'm not a good reader of weird fiction. I do like some bizarre stories but there's an invisible border that I cannot define. If the weird quotient crosses that limit, my bewilderment gets in the way of my enjoyment. Of the eight stories in this book, seven were too eccentric for me. Many of the stories also went a bit too lewd for my liking. Some tales had a fabulous concept but the plot development was too haphazard for my taste. Each of the stories is written in first person, which led to a reading tedium after a while. Moreover, it was sometimes difficult to understand if the narrator was male or female (or other), which I prefer knowing as I get a better sense of the character’s behaviour. (I could have gone with the presumption that female authors writing feminist stories would obviously go for female protagonists, but this this didn’t come out strongly through the writing.) Basically, several red flags based on my reading preferences.

Only one story worked well for me: the story that had led me to this book in the first place. If you know the classic short story, "The Girl with the Green Ribbon", ‘The Husband Stitch’ is a retelling from the girl's point of view. It will create the same chill in your heart as the original did. But not knowing the classic tale would be better as your suspense would be greater. So many answers revealed and yet so unanswered questions! This is brilliant dark storytelling that offers no closure. I liked the story even better this time around. I had rated it four earlier, but was glad to go with a 4.5 this time. It was the only story in the book that came near 4 stars for me.

As my disconnect with the book is greatly due to my reading preferences, I shall leave this without a rating.

Recommended to those who enjoy bizarre fiction with a strong feminist theme.

This was a library read.