Book Review: Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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Her Body & Other Parties is a feminist short story collection that grapples with the horrors of the female experience, particularly in relation to female bodies, identities, as well as personal autonomy and storytelling.

Buy Her Body & Other Parties

As I mentioned, Her Body & Other Parties is a feminist short story collection that grapples with the horrors of the female experience, particularly in relation to female bodies, identities, as well as personal autonomy and storytelling.

In Her Body & Other Parties, Machado delves deep into issues around women’s desires, bodies, and identities, and she does so by masterfully testing the boundaries of the real and imagined [often phantom-like imagery] to illustrate the complexities of autonomy and storytelling.

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. I will admit that there might have been two stories (Inventory and Especially Heinous) that I did not resonate with, yet I still admired Machado’s daring innovation in the format.

However, The Husband Stitch, Real Women Have Bodies, and especially The Resident are some of my new all-time favourite short stories.

As I said, I admire her originality – for example, in the opening story, The Husband Stitch, the reader is given instructions to illustrate the gravity of the betrayal by reflecting it within their own bodies, mostly by centering breath and pain:

(If you read this story out loud, the sounds of the clearing can be best reproduced by taking a deep breath and holding it for a long moment. Then release the air all at once, permitting your chest to collapse like a block tower knocked to the ground. Do this again, and again, shortening the time between the held breath and the release.) (p. 7)

I’m definitely looking forward to reading more by Machado!

My individual ratings for the stories:

The Husband Stitch 4⭐️
Inventory 2⭐️
Mothers 3⭐️
Especially Heinous 3.5⭐️
Real Women Have Bodies 4.5⭐️
Eight Bites 2⭐️
The Resident 5⭐️!
Difficult at Parties 1⭐️

I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled off to a sanatorium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it? (p. 4)

I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them. (p. 7)

Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle. (p. 11)

I took a step toward her. “It is my right to reside in my own mind.

It is my right,” I said. “It is my right to be unsociable and it is my right to be unpleasant to be around. Do you ever listen to yourself? This is crazy, that is crazy, everything is crazy to you. By whose measure?

Well, it is my right to be crazy, as you love to say so much. I have no shame. I have felt many things in my life, but shame is not among them.” The volume of my voice caused me to stand on my tiptoes.

I could not remember yelling like this, ever. “You may think that I have an obligation to you but I assure you that us being thrown together in this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never had less of an obligation to anyone in my life, you aggressively ordinary woman.” (p. 210)

⭐⭐⭐⭐