A woman has the perfect life…except for one thing: The green ribbon tied around her neck. A deadly epidemic leads another woman to take stock of the events in her life. A single mother struggles to take care of a child she has no connection to. Alternative episodes of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” bleed together. Employees at a dress shop live in a world where fading away is an incurable illness. A woman gets an irreversible surgery and is not prepared for the side effects. A writer begins a residency at the place she used to camp at as a girl scout. A couple deals with the aftermath of a traumatic event. Each of these stories is weaved together in Carmen Maria Machado’s “Her Body and Other Parties.”
“Her Body and Other Parties” combines horror, science fiction and psychological drama into an amalgamation of shocking stories. The 2017 short story collection served as Machado’s debut book, and the source of much acclaim—including the Shirley Jackson Award.
As with most short story collections, “Her Body and Other Parties” has a central theme that ties all of its parts together: The female experience. Through the stories “The Husband Stitch,” “Inventory” and “Mothers” Machado illustrates the complexities of different relationships from a female perspective. Meanwhile, in “Especially Heinous” and “Difficult at Parties” she highlights the omnipresent fears forced upon the modern woman. “Eight Bites” and “Real Women Have Bodies” tackle issues with self-perception. Lastly, “The Resident” hones in on women’s mental health and the inadequacy of how it is treated in society.
Although relationships, self-perception, fear and mental health are factors of life shared by the entire human race, Machado turns each one into something new and obscure that her audience must reexamine with care. This is helped by her scattered blending of both genres and format. Genre-wise, the lines between opposing forces—horror and comedy, science fiction and realistic fiction—are blurred in every one of her stories. Similarly, the format switches with each new plotline; in “Especially Heinous” every paragraph is introduced with a fake episode title, and in “The Resident” all of the names of characters and places are blanked out.
In all, each little detail change brings into question exactly what Machado wants her audience to obtain from her writing, making reading her work like solving an intricate puzzle. I found myself rereading words, phrases and entire sections of the stories to try to get the extent of Machado’s vision out of the book, and I still think I could probably benefit from reading the whole thing over again. In other words, her writing is nothing short of wildly destabilizing and completely mesmerizing all at once.
Even though each story is jarringly hypnotic in a way that’s hard to explain, there were a couple that stuck out to me while I was reading. “Especially Heinous” first piqued my interest because of its title. Anyone who’s familiar with “Law and Order” will immediately recognize it as one of the show’s opening lines, and while I was reading “Her Body and Other Parties” I also happened to be rewatching some of the show. The short story kept my attention with its feverish pace, bewildering plot points and the incredulity I felt as a result of both. Inversely, “The Husband Stitch” was formatted and paced far more regularly, but proved just as shocking and thematically significant. Out of all of the stories, it hit me the hardest emotionally.
Overall, I have nothing bad to say about Machado’s writing or “Her Body and Other Parties.” It’s the perfect debut and I can easily see why it’s been so heavily applauded. I gave it five out of five stars both of the times I read it, and I’m sure there will be a third. I’d say it’s a dream of a short story collection, but it might be more of a nightmare.
