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vampfang 's review for:
Her Body and Other Parties
by Carmen Maria Machado
4.5 stars. i really loved this book!!! machado's writing was so beautiful, complex, and thought-provoking. they're subtle, detached, yet still seem to say just the right thing to reach you. she really plays with the boundaries of realistic fiction and the supernatural, including a lot of fantasy and horror elements that i really loved. i also love the way she centers queerness and womanhood in her stories as well. she tends not to give away too much information in her stories so there were times where i was feeling a bit confused, but at the same time i always felt like her stories were saying something really powerful, and i enjoyed the challenge that i got from reading them. here are my individual thoughts:
"the husband stitch" 5/5
i loved this story when i first read it last august, but i think i loved it even more the second time around. the details all worked together so nicely to create the full picture of the story, without machado ever being heavy-handed. as someone who grew up with the green ribbon story, i appreciated the creativity of this retelling.
"inventory" 5/5
this wasn’t a story i could really relate to due to my age but i still liked it, maybe because i got a glimpse into a life other than my own. i loved the way it was told in small chunks i feel like that was really good for my attention span, and it was also nice getting little vignettes of each person. i was kind of curious what the virus was, but that's not really the point.
"mothers" 4/5
i didn’t quite get the ending, but i liked the way it was told, with the “not-memories.” i wanted a bit more from the story, though it’s still complete by the end. the description of the house was really well written and i felt the character’s yearning.
"especially heinous" 3.5/5
this honestly confused the fuck out of me. i had never seen svu so i was lost from the start, and even when it became clear that it wasn’t really about svu the story itself wasn’t super clear. it was here that i started getting used to machado’s dreamlike writing style that often leaves stories vague and without closure, but this was more like that than the others, and i wasn't really sure what it was trying to say. i liked how it was told in chunks like "inventory," and i enjoyed the writing.
"real women have bodies" 4/5
i first read this in late 2020 for a gender and sexuality in literature class, but i'm not sure my perspective has changed the second time around, since the metaphor is pretty cut-and-dry. it's a story about how the pressure placed on women suffocates them, causing them to make themselves small, and eventually "fade away," though i think the metaphor wasn't super developed. like why does petra fade before the narrator? i suppose the message is that it happens to all women, so there's no real reason for it, but i feel like there should have been more specificity. i really liked the narrator's relationship with petra, purely from an "i'm gay and i like reading about gay relationships" standpoint.
"eight bites" 4.5/5
i also read this in late 2020 for the same class, but i liked this one more the second time around. my only complaint is that i wish there was more, because i thought it was really well written and symbolic and all the details fit together really well, that there could've been more filling in the time between the surgery and the character's death.
"the resident" 4/5
i was left with a lot of questions after this one. what was the deal with the painter? how did she “meet herself?” was that thing in the woods her? as time went on, i began to connect with it more, and the thing i'm left with is the character's profound sense of isolation, her inability to fit in anywhere, be it girl scout camp or the residency. this was something i also related to as a young, queer, mentally ill person. i liked how she embraced her "craziness" by the end when she yelled at lydia.
"difficult at parties" 3/5
i honestly just didn't get this one, so it felt like kind of a weak note to end on. as always, i enjoyed machado's writing, so i wasn't bored or anything, but i just did not connect with it.
"the husband stitch" 5/5
i loved this story when i first read it last august, but i think i loved it even more the second time around. the details all worked together so nicely to create the full picture of the story, without machado ever being heavy-handed. as someone who grew up with the green ribbon story, i appreciated the creativity of this retelling.
"inventory" 5/5
this wasn’t a story i could really relate to due to my age but i still liked it, maybe because i got a glimpse into a life other than my own. i loved the way it was told in small chunks i feel like that was really good for my attention span, and it was also nice getting little vignettes of each person. i was kind of curious what the virus was, but that's not really the point.
"mothers" 4/5
i didn’t quite get the ending, but i liked the way it was told, with the “not-memories.” i wanted a bit more from the story, though it’s still complete by the end. the description of the house was really well written and i felt the character’s yearning.
"especially heinous" 3.5/5
this honestly confused the fuck out of me. i had never seen svu so i was lost from the start, and even when it became clear that it wasn’t really about svu the story itself wasn’t super clear. it was here that i started getting used to machado’s dreamlike writing style that often leaves stories vague and without closure, but this was more like that than the others, and i wasn't really sure what it was trying to say. i liked how it was told in chunks like "inventory," and i enjoyed the writing.
"real women have bodies" 4/5
i first read this in late 2020 for a gender and sexuality in literature class, but i'm not sure my perspective has changed the second time around, since the metaphor is pretty cut-and-dry. it's a story about how the pressure placed on women suffocates them, causing them to make themselves small, and eventually "fade away," though i think the metaphor wasn't super developed. like why does petra fade before the narrator? i suppose the message is that it happens to all women, so there's no real reason for it, but i feel like there should have been more specificity. i really liked the narrator's relationship with petra, purely from an "i'm gay and i like reading about gay relationships" standpoint.
"eight bites" 4.5/5
i also read this in late 2020 for the same class, but i liked this one more the second time around. my only complaint is that i wish there was more, because i thought it was really well written and symbolic and all the details fit together really well, that there could've been more filling in the time between the surgery and the character's death.
"the resident" 4/5
i was left with a lot of questions after this one. what was the deal with the painter? how did she “meet herself?” was that thing in the woods her? as time went on, i began to connect with it more, and the thing i'm left with is the character's profound sense of isolation, her inability to fit in anywhere, be it girl scout camp or the residency. this was something i also related to as a young, queer, mentally ill person. i liked how she embraced her "craziness" by the end when she yelled at lydia.
"difficult at parties" 3/5
i honestly just didn't get this one, so it felt like kind of a weak note to end on. as always, i enjoyed machado's writing, so i wasn't bored or anything, but i just did not connect with it.