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Her body and other parties : stories

Author

Machado, Carmen Maria, author.

Preferred Title

Short stories. Selections

Title

Her body and other parties : stories / Carmen Maria Machado.

Format

Book

Published

Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, [2017]

Description

245 pages ; 21 cm

Other contributors

Machado, Carmen Maria. Husband stitch. Container of (work) Machado, Carmen Maria. Inventory. Container of (work) Machado, Carmen Maria. Mothers. Container of (work) Machado, Carmen Maria. Especially heinous. Container of (work) Machado, Carmen Maria. Real women have bodies. Container of (work) Machado, Carmen Maria. Eight bites. Container of (work) Machado, Carmen Maria. Resident. Container of (work) Machado, Carmen Maria. Difficult at parties. Container of (work)

Contents

• The husband stitch
• Inventory
• Mothers
• Especially heinous
• Real women have bodies
• Eight bites
• The resident
• Difficult at parties.

Summary

Contains short stories about the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. "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 naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, 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."--Publisher's description.

Awards

National Book Award Finalist, 2017

Subject headings

Women--Fiction. Women--Identity--Fiction. Man-woman relationships--Fiction. Sexual minorities--Fiction.

Genre heading

Short stories. Fiction. Psychological fiction. Science fiction. Short stories. Science fiction. Short stories. Short stories. Psychological fiction. Domestic fiction.

ISBN

9781555977887 (paperback) 155597788X (paperback) 9781781259528 1781259526