Her Body and Other Parties: Stories in Around the Year in 52 Books

Oct 10, 2021 Jacqie rated it it was ok

Shelves: didnt-finish, sirens-2021

Themes from this short story collection: GLBTQ+, romantic relationships gone wrong, feminism, Law and Order SVU (you read that right), body shaming.

I was recommended this book by several friends, and I'm as sad as anybody that it just didn't do it for me. I was going to say that maybe it's just aged poorly, but I see the publication date is 2017, so it's only four years old.

I did very much like The Husband Stitch, probably the author's most famous story. And I also liked Inventory, a backward lo Themes from this short story collection: GLBTQ+, romantic relationships gone wrong, feminism, Law and Order SVU (you read that right), body shaming.

I was recommended this book by several friends, and I'm as sad as anybody that it just didn't do it for me. I was going to say that maybe it's just aged poorly, but I see the publication date is 2017, so it's only four years old.

I did very much like The Husband Stitch, probably the author's most famous story. And I also liked Inventory, a backward looking diary of people the protagonist has slept with along with a world slowly ending. I was up for more. Then I hit "Especially Heinous". WTF. This was a sixty-page long imagining of fantastical episodes of Law and Order: SVU. I hated reading it because it seemed to go nowhere and I couldn't stand the thought of reading sixty pages of it, so I skipped through the story- it didn't seem like the vignettes added up to anything, but maybe I missed something. But do you really need SIXTY PAGES of this to add up to something?

The next couple of stories felt watery- there was something there about women not being seen, women who changed themselves or were changed because of body image issues. These stories didn't quite punch home for me. When I saw that the next story was about an author, I flinched. Fiction stories about authors can end up self-indulgent, and I guess I felt like the author had indulged herself enough in the book and I didn't trust her to bring me along anymore at this point. So I didn't read the last two stories. Oh, and I was disappointed in the eroticism. I feel like a gay woman should know better than write "I came and came" after just having three fingers stuck inside her with almost no foreplay. This unrealistic portrayal of female arousal doesn't help anyone.

Maybe this was a case of me expecting more science fiction/fantasy from what seems to actually be a literary author, despite her genre trimmings? I'd call most of the stories more magical realism than actual SF/F, the genre being used as a tool for expressing an author's conceit instead of imagining "what if?" Disappointing for me. Maybe I've been reading too many short story collections lately. ...more

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Sep 20, 2020 Jen K rated it liked it

Machado's short story collection is distinctive. I'm not sure I've read anything like it. Her stories somehow mix feminism with horror and fantasy, mental health, desire and a focus on the female body. They are dark but thoughtful. Her first story was possibly the strongest about a couple who meet when young and have a somewhat mutually happy and satisfying relationship except for the ribbon around the woman's neck which she will not let the husband touch. This one little thing held back from th ...more

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Aug 29, 2020 Katie rated it really liked it

No one told me the second story in this collection was a plague one! That makes this a tough 2020 book.

My favorites from this collection were The Husband Stitch and The Resident.

There are a lot of highly mixed opinions on the SVU story Especially Heinous, but I was just happy to see literary representation from someone who also believed that Benson and Cabot had a thing going on.

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Aug 21, 2019 alli rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, strong-female-characters

I finished this book two months ago but I keep thinking about it. The writing is beautiful and so unlike the things I normally pick up. Highly recommend!

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May 26, 2018 Marie (UK) rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-reading-challenge

i have no idea what anyone sees in this. Fantasy-Where? Science fiction - in who's head? Horro- maybe a bit but mainly its just Rubbish. Two of the stories are just lists, only one of them has any real sense of a beginning, middle and end- eight bites, the rest are senseless oddities. ...more

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Oct 03, 2023 Joy rated it it was ok

Shelves: horror

I'm going to be honest, I blacked out through much of the last two stories. As with many short story collections, there are some good and some not-so-good. I appreciate the themes, and there are a couple of stories that really worked for me, but there were several that really didn't. ...more

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