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First, Body: Stories
Named one of the best young American novelists by Granta magazine, an award-winning writer presents a collection of dark, lyrical stories featuring working-class youths in pursuit of fleeting pleasures. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.
165 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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243 people want to read
About the author
Melanie Rae Thon
24 books30 followersMelanie Rae Thon is a Professor of English at the University of Utah.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
October 31, 2012
Oh where or where should I start? Should I talk about how depressing each story is? Or should I rave how wonderful Melanie Rae Thon uses words and descriptions and settings and characters to convey the perfect emotion, never going overboard, never under utilizing her talents? We’ll come back to both of those issues in a moment.
As Amanda mentioned earlier to me, the Literary Gods have been blessing me with some really amazing reads as of late. The most recent LET THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ERASE YOUR NAME was an absolute joy—albeit, in that strange melancholy I-think-I-am-depressed-but-don’t-really-feel-depressed sort of way. FRIST, BODY by Melanie Rae Thon is definitely another great find that I would never have even known about had it not magically appeared in a donation box a few months back. This lithe volume is composed of seven stories that all gravitate toward the subject of body: real, imagined, created, destroyed, loved or loathed.
But before getting into the book, I want to ask one simple question: Where have you gone Ms. Thon? In 1996, Granta named you one of the “best young American novelists.” That is quite an accomplishment; but since 2001, you haven’t published anything. Why? Your voice is amazing. Your use of images to invoke feeling rivals the best working today. We, as readers, need you. Come back. Please.
So the stories. Well, to be honest, I really don’t know where to begin. I refuse to even discuss the first story, First, Body because by even hinting about how great it is I feel will diminish the magic one gets while reading it for the first time. Let’s start with Little White Sister. This story is about race and drugs and what it’s like to be alone. Full of crisp and sensuous language, images that burn into your mind, and characters that you just know you’ve seen before—but never extended a moment of conversation their way—which brings one to a level of misery never encountered before. Call this hyperbole, if you want, but while reading this story I knew I had in my hands a rich text, a text of thoughts and ideas that brims with possibilities, even if these possibilities are of the sordid, darker variety.
Am I even making sense?
Let’s move on to Nobody’s Daughter. This story recounts the lives of three women. A mother and two daughters. The nameless narrator thinks back over her life and how change—never invited, never wanted—altered what she thought was happiness into a bleak reality that she must now own as if this was all she ever knew. Elements of prostitution and drug usage seep on every page for the first third of the story, while acceptance of being replaced by a different family when her mother remarries takes the story the rest of the way. Death and homelessness and destitution permeate through phrases and descriptions.
This haunting description comes from page 102:
In her pocket, one vial of crack, almost gone. In her veins, strangers’ blood. She possessed ninety-six pounds. I want to be exact. The ninety-six pounds included the weight of skin, coat, bowels, lungs; the weight of dirt under her nails; the weight of semen, three men last night and five the night before.
Brutal--but, strangely, beautiful.
And when the man’s family replaces the narrator, Thon writes from page 105:
How many men can pass through one woman? How many children can one woman have? I tried to count: Clare’s father and Clare, my father and me, two men between, two children never born whose tiny fingers still dug somewhere.
Am I doing this book justice? I feel so confused. Sad. Little, almost.
I am going to end with this story: Snow Thief. As you may have guessed, most of the stories have women as the main characters; me not being a woman I sometimes found the grief of what they felt to be hard to relate to in a physical way. That is until this story. Snow Thief asks the question: Do we become orphaned as adults when our parents die? I’m not sure if there is an answer to this question, but Thon uses some extraordinary images of an elk hunt, the mother’s stroke, and an illicit sexual liaison between the narrator and the narrator’s father’s friend as apt examples of how we change from childhood to adulthood. As the narrator deals with her mother dying, a brother who is only looking for the final financial reward upon his mother’s death, she begins to understand that the older she became the more she realized the less she knew about her parents or herself. In dark, lyrical language, Thon describes these feelings in a dream-like way, smearing the boundary between reality and fantasy…
Reading over what I’ve written, I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of explaining myself. (See what you’ve done to me Ms. Thon? I’m a blabbering idiot, smitten with your words.)
I guess the best way I can describe this is: FIRST, BODY is a stark indictment on what it means to be trapped in one’s body. We are who we are, and no matter how hard you work to become someone else, you are always going to have the same skin-suit as you had the previous day. Depressing? Absolutely. But it is also magical and uplifting. Surreal and grounded. This collection of stories challenges and risks the reader to take an inventory of who they are. At least that’s what it did for me.
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
As Amanda mentioned earlier to me, the Literary Gods have been blessing me with some really amazing reads as of late. The most recent LET THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ERASE YOUR NAME was an absolute joy—albeit, in that strange melancholy I-think-I-am-depressed-but-don’t-really-feel-depressed sort of way. FRIST, BODY by Melanie Rae Thon is definitely another great find that I would never have even known about had it not magically appeared in a donation box a few months back. This lithe volume is composed of seven stories that all gravitate toward the subject of body: real, imagined, created, destroyed, loved or loathed.
But before getting into the book, I want to ask one simple question: Where have you gone Ms. Thon? In 1996, Granta named you one of the “best young American novelists.” That is quite an accomplishment; but since 2001, you haven’t published anything. Why? Your voice is amazing. Your use of images to invoke feeling rivals the best working today. We, as readers, need you. Come back. Please.
So the stories. Well, to be honest, I really don’t know where to begin. I refuse to even discuss the first story, First, Body because by even hinting about how great it is I feel will diminish the magic one gets while reading it for the first time. Let’s start with Little White Sister. This story is about race and drugs and what it’s like to be alone. Full of crisp and sensuous language, images that burn into your mind, and characters that you just know you’ve seen before—but never extended a moment of conversation their way—which brings one to a level of misery never encountered before. Call this hyperbole, if you want, but while reading this story I knew I had in my hands a rich text, a text of thoughts and ideas that brims with possibilities, even if these possibilities are of the sordid, darker variety.
Am I even making sense?
Let’s move on to Nobody’s Daughter. This story recounts the lives of three women. A mother and two daughters. The nameless narrator thinks back over her life and how change—never invited, never wanted—altered what she thought was happiness into a bleak reality that she must now own as if this was all she ever knew. Elements of prostitution and drug usage seep on every page for the first third of the story, while acceptance of being replaced by a different family when her mother remarries takes the story the rest of the way. Death and homelessness and destitution permeate through phrases and descriptions.
This haunting description comes from page 102:
In her pocket, one vial of crack, almost gone. In her veins, strangers’ blood. She possessed ninety-six pounds. I want to be exact. The ninety-six pounds included the weight of skin, coat, bowels, lungs; the weight of dirt under her nails; the weight of semen, three men last night and five the night before.
Brutal--but, strangely, beautiful.
And when the man’s family replaces the narrator, Thon writes from page 105:
How many men can pass through one woman? How many children can one woman have? I tried to count: Clare’s father and Clare, my father and me, two men between, two children never born whose tiny fingers still dug somewhere.
Am I doing this book justice? I feel so confused. Sad. Little, almost.
I am going to end with this story: Snow Thief. As you may have guessed, most of the stories have women as the main characters; me not being a woman I sometimes found the grief of what they felt to be hard to relate to in a physical way. That is until this story. Snow Thief asks the question: Do we become orphaned as adults when our parents die? I’m not sure if there is an answer to this question, but Thon uses some extraordinary images of an elk hunt, the mother’s stroke, and an illicit sexual liaison between the narrator and the narrator’s father’s friend as apt examples of how we change from childhood to adulthood. As the narrator deals with her mother dying, a brother who is only looking for the final financial reward upon his mother’s death, she begins to understand that the older she became the more she realized the less she knew about her parents or herself. In dark, lyrical language, Thon describes these feelings in a dream-like way, smearing the boundary between reality and fantasy…
Reading over what I’ve written, I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of explaining myself. (See what you’ve done to me Ms. Thon? I’m a blabbering idiot, smitten with your words.)
I guess the best way I can describe this is: FIRST, BODY is a stark indictment on what it means to be trapped in one’s body. We are who we are, and no matter how hard you work to become someone else, you are always going to have the same skin-suit as you had the previous day. Depressing? Absolutely. But it is also magical and uplifting. Surreal and grounded. This collection of stories challenges and risks the reader to take an inventory of who they are. At least that’s what it did for me.
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
February 22, 2009
I have a literary crush on Melanie Thon. She writes like an angel. Sid's moment with Gloria Luby in the collection's title story is one of my all-time favorite scenes.
March 4, 2009
Profound, rough, human, stunning
October 8, 2013
This book is stunning. Melanie Rae Thon's prose is tight, her use of words is seamless. The language is vivid, fierce, and breathtakingly powerful. Thon writes with a kind of fluidity and lyricism I have never before seen outside of poetry. These stories are raw humanity. Each warrants multiple close readings, and every time I read them I pulled something new. The characters are sympathetic, their roles, decisions, and trials are real. Thon leaves no stone of human nature unturned, and hides behind no upper class walls of idealism. Regardless of whether I felt I fully understood the literal happenings in each story, I found myself emotionally moved and disturbed at the conclusion of each one. That is the true power of the written word at its best. Melanie Rae Thon has given me a whole new outlook on prose and a new level of writing to strive for in my own work.
December 9, 2013
HOLY GOD these stories are painfully beautiful.
I'm outraged that I never heard of Melanie Rae Thon until this summer, when my husband read "Xmas, Jamaica Plain" for a class. He told me to read it, and it left me in ruins, so obviously I had to find the book it's from.
There is no justice in the universe. Writing this good actually exists. People this talented are real. And they're not the authors you've heard of. Outrageous.
These stories are brutal and raw yet subtle and lovely and they are so good I actually kind of hate them.
This book is amazing. The end.
I'm outraged that I never heard of Melanie Rae Thon until this summer, when my husband read "Xmas, Jamaica Plain" for a class. He told me to read it, and it left me in ruins, so obviously I had to find the book it's from.
There is no justice in the universe. Writing this good actually exists. People this talented are real. And they're not the authors you've heard of. Outrageous.
These stories are brutal and raw yet subtle and lovely and they are so good I actually kind of hate them.
This book is amazing. The end.
July 17, 2009
One of the best books I've ever read. Brutally honest. Beautiful writing style. I couldn't stop rereading each story (esp first, body).
Read
April 6, 2023Short stories are some of my favourite things to read. There is something about a short story that makes it the perfect vehicle for gaining insight into someone else's life. Through her stories, written sharply and precisely, Melanie Rae Thon opened up a new perspective for me, allowed me to gain a different kind of understanding for the struggles of others, while finding recognition in the universal struggle of being limited by our own physicality. Thanks to Open Road Media Integrated and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay, but as I explain below, I needed some time with these stories.
The stories in First, Body are technically all pretty sad, and, dare I say, depressing. And yet there is also a melancholy beauty to all of them. The titular 'First, Body' is a deeply tragic investigation of love, trying to accept one's self, and not knowing your own place in the world. Yet is it really about these things? It's hard to say. 'Little White Sister' considers race and drug (ab)use, two topics that are very easily exploited and which Melanie Rae Thon carefully weaves into a story of loneliness and identity. 'Nobody's Daughter' sees a woman reconsider her life and how the seeming past happiness of her childhood has twisted into a present misery. Another story that engages with childhood is 'Snow Thief', which questions how much we know our parents and ourselves and what the difference is between the childhood we experience and the one we remember. Each of the stories in this collection engages with some intense topics such as, for example, abortion in 'Necessary Angels' or death and self-punishment in 'Father, Lover, Deadman, Dreamer', and it can make the whole collection feel very heavy. These definitely aren't stories I read through quickly, jumping to the next immediately after having finished the first. They need their time to sink in and so it took me quite a while to get through the collection and to figure out my own thoughts on it. While I struggled with the stories at times, didn't entirely follow them, or didn't quite know where Thon was leading me, I did remain fascinated throughout.
I was intrigued into this collection in part by the description in the blurb, of Melanie Rae Thon's "taut, persistent, and brilliantly cadenced" writing. And it definitely is all of these things. There is an utter starkness to these tales, to the persistence with which Rae Thon brings home her point, and to the cadence of it. There is an inflection to her writing that feels very real, that hits the ear as true, and there is something musical to how her writing seems to capture the thoughts of her characters. It is not that all of these characters are in their final moments, but it does feel like many of these characters are having the kind of realisations or thoughts which lead to a shift, to the ending of a song and, hopefully, the starting of a new, different one. That hope is perhaps more a desire for hope on my part, but it was nonetheless one which her writing inspired in me, alongside a deeper and perhaps gentler understanding of my fellow human beings. We are all torn in our own ways, used and discarded, tied down in our own bodies and unable to escape from them. That's a rough realisation, but once you can include that misery in your point of view, there is also still beauty there.
First, Body is a fascinating collection of rough but insightful stories. Melanie Rae Thon's characters go through it and she never shies away from making their hardships explicit. While this sometimes makes for a painful reading experience, it is nonetheless an experience that widens your perspective. And her writing is indeed, top notch.
URL: https://universeinwords.blogspot.com/...
The stories in First, Body are technically all pretty sad, and, dare I say, depressing. And yet there is also a melancholy beauty to all of them. The titular 'First, Body' is a deeply tragic investigation of love, trying to accept one's self, and not knowing your own place in the world. Yet is it really about these things? It's hard to say. 'Little White Sister' considers race and drug (ab)use, two topics that are very easily exploited and which Melanie Rae Thon carefully weaves into a story of loneliness and identity. 'Nobody's Daughter' sees a woman reconsider her life and how the seeming past happiness of her childhood has twisted into a present misery. Another story that engages with childhood is 'Snow Thief', which questions how much we know our parents and ourselves and what the difference is between the childhood we experience and the one we remember. Each of the stories in this collection engages with some intense topics such as, for example, abortion in 'Necessary Angels' or death and self-punishment in 'Father, Lover, Deadman, Dreamer', and it can make the whole collection feel very heavy. These definitely aren't stories I read through quickly, jumping to the next immediately after having finished the first. They need their time to sink in and so it took me quite a while to get through the collection and to figure out my own thoughts on it. While I struggled with the stories at times, didn't entirely follow them, or didn't quite know where Thon was leading me, I did remain fascinated throughout.
I was intrigued into this collection in part by the description in the blurb, of Melanie Rae Thon's "taut, persistent, and brilliantly cadenced" writing. And it definitely is all of these things. There is an utter starkness to these tales, to the persistence with which Rae Thon brings home her point, and to the cadence of it. There is an inflection to her writing that feels very real, that hits the ear as true, and there is something musical to how her writing seems to capture the thoughts of her characters. It is not that all of these characters are in their final moments, but it does feel like many of these characters are having the kind of realisations or thoughts which lead to a shift, to the ending of a song and, hopefully, the starting of a new, different one. That hope is perhaps more a desire for hope on my part, but it was nonetheless one which her writing inspired in me, alongside a deeper and perhaps gentler understanding of my fellow human beings. We are all torn in our own ways, used and discarded, tied down in our own bodies and unable to escape from them. That's a rough realisation, but once you can include that misery in your point of view, there is also still beauty there.
First, Body is a fascinating collection of rough but insightful stories. Melanie Rae Thon's characters go through it and she never shies away from making their hardships explicit. While this sometimes makes for a painful reading experience, it is nonetheless an experience that widens your perspective. And her writing is indeed, top notch.
URL: https://universeinwords.blogspot.com/...
November 16, 2022
i picked this up randomly in Boston’s Brattle bookstore.
what a great collection of stories. unique individuals with the common threads of struggle, pain, loss, prejudice. stories that made me feel more aware of the very real struggles of others who exist on this earth before/with/after me. some moments of connection and many of empathy.
what a great collection of stories. unique individuals with the common threads of struggle, pain, loss, prejudice. stories that made me feel more aware of the very real struggles of others who exist on this earth before/with/after me. some moments of connection and many of empathy.
July 31, 2023
The best book I ever picked up at a Little Free Library: stories about sympathetic but broken people, almost painful to read, related with an absolute minimum of sentimentality. It's rare to find compassion and craft in such equally high measure.
May 13, 2024
Melanie Rae Thon's stories are brutal and heartbreaking and gorgeous. She writes about broken people, but does so with an urgent tenderness. And her prose: stunning, lyrical, propulsive. It's the imagery in these stories that is so compelling, evidence of a world truly seen.
March 8, 2019
Like blues music, rough and melancholy.
October 27, 2021
Weirdly sadly wonderful
June 14, 2022
hauntingly beautiful.
April 6, 2023
so Depressing such Descriptive, gorgeous writing 😭😭😭
December 11, 2024
Uh oh! I have a new author obsession now
October 12, 2025
This collection of short stories is hauntingly beautiful. Thon portrays topics of broken families, homelessness, violence, and love in a way that cuts you deep into the bone. I also loved that many of the stories took place in the boston area.
November 26, 2008
I read this because Holly read and didn't like it. She found the stories confusing and wanted my opinion. Overall, the stories were more than decent--better than the average, but without being especially memorable. (It probably didn't help any that I've read a lot of short stories lately and was prepared to take a break from them for awhile when Holly pushed this collection on me.) I didn't have much trouble understanding the stories after the first one, which made more sense to me in retrospect once I grew accustomed to the writing style. Most of the stories have to do with interracial sex or people resisting the urge to engage in it. The characters, ranging from teenagers to a Vietnam vet, are mostly strung out on drugs or recovering. In the last story, "Necessary Angels," a fourteen-year-old girl (very willingly) has an affair with an eighteen-year-old black man, which leads to pregnancy, which leads to abortion. As a collection, they complement each other well, but it didn't stand out to me in particular, not on a personal level at least.
December 21, 2014
By far the story in this collection that grabbed me hardest was Father, Lover, Deadman, Dreamer. "I learned that the first lie is silence." What a powerful and fitting line for this one! The girl in the story went from carelessly fun to damaged over a mistake. More than anything it exposes the heavy weight of choices, like dragging a dead rotting horse behind you for all eternity, or a "deadman". Melanie Rae Thon creates stories that grieve for their characters and it's never light or sweet. I like messy and damaged people, by far more captivating than false perfection. I always feel I can relate to her characters in their thoughts, feelings and flaws. Such a good writer! I look forward to reading the next release 'Girls in the Grass: Tales of Love and Lies'.
March 16, 2015
Melanie Rae Thon is a master of both the short and long forms of fiction. Each short story in ‘First, Body’ is a miniature novel, while each chapter of ‘Sweet Hearts’ packs the punch of a prose poem. Haunting memories and soft impressions blend with gritty reality to guide her tortured characters through life on impoverished borderlands. But there is beauty in all that pain.
Matt Hlinak
Author of DoG
Matt Hlinak
Author of DoG
Want to read
February 3, 2013I just read the title story of this collection in the Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction 1999 and man was I blown away. Enough to look her up and to read "Letters in the Snow" in the 2006 O Henry Awards. I love what I found in these two stories! And am looking forward to reading more of her work!
June 17, 2013
The title story, overwhelmingly good, dense as diamond, lyrical, heart-stabbing. Continuing good throughout, though occasionally repetitive in tricks and phrasing. And I'd swear “Xmas, Jamaica Plain” has been reworked from the BASS version--the extraordinary jagged edges feel slightly rounded off. Still and all, awfully good.
December 19, 2014
I received this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
First, Body is a series of beautifully written, devastatingly gorgeous short stories about topics such as race, addition, love, and violence. It's about broken families, destroyed lives, and death, but most of all life. The stories are brutal and haunting, and Thon is clearly a gifted writer.
First, Body is a series of beautifully written, devastatingly gorgeous short stories about topics such as race, addition, love, and violence. It's about broken families, destroyed lives, and death, but most of all life. The stories are brutal and haunting, and Thon is clearly a gifted writer.
April 14, 2010
great story collection. unfortunately someone had ripped out a few pages so I didn't get to finish all the stories completely. very powerful writing. I'd be interested to read more of this author to see whether she always rights about the same subject matter.
January 11, 2008
Disturbing. The language here is as gorgeous and haunting as I've ever come across.
February 19, 2008
Probably the best book of short stories I've read. I learn so much from her about specificity, subtly, and the careful use of language.
Want to read
July 22, 2008Recommended by Aimee Bender.
July 23, 2008
A wonderful short story collection. These stark and honest stories will cut to the bone and leave a scar.
Read
October 23, 2008I love this collection -- heartbreaking and breathtaking and brutal.
June 12, 2011
Loved it.
September 23, 2014
Great collection of stories. Well-written and each unique in their style and characters.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews