| Record Number |
773519 |
| ISBN |
9781555977887 (paperback) |
| Author |
Machado, Carmen Maria author. |
| Title |
Her body and other parties : stories / Carmen Maria Machado. |
| Publisher/Date |
Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, [2017] |
| ©2017 |
| Pagination etc. |
245 pages ; 21 cm. |
| Contents note |
The husband stitch -- Inventory -- Mothers -- Especially heinous -- Real women have bodies -- Eight bites -- The resident -- Difficult at parties. |
| Summary Note |
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 naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, 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. |
| Subject |
Women -- Fiction |
| Women -- Identity -- Fiction |
| Man-woman relationships -- Fiction |
| Psychological fiction. |
| Science fiction. |
| Short stories. |
| Added Author |
Machado, Carmen Maria Husband stitch. |
| Machado, Carmen Maria Inventory. |
| Machado, Carmen Maria Mothers. |
| Machado, Carmen Maria Especially henious. |
| Machado, Carmen Maria Real women have bodies. |
| Machado, Carmen Maria Eight bites. |
| Machado, Carmen Maria Resident. |
| Machado, Carmen Maria Difficult at parties. |
| Shelf Location |
F MACH |
