Review: Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a collection of supernatural stories about women and their bodies. My favorite was definitely The Husband Stitch, which retells the urban legend of the Green Ribbon.

Podcastle did an excellent podcast version of this one:

http://podcastle.org/2016/03/29/podca...

In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. I am at a neighbour’s party with my parents, and I am seventeen.

The other highlights were "Eight Bites," about an insecure woman who undergoes bariatric surgery for cosmetic reasons, and becomes haunted (literally) by the parts of herself that she has gotten rid of, and "Real Women Have Bodies," in which women start to mysteriously become invisible for no apparent reason.

Abigail Nussbaum at Asking the Wrong Questions liked "Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU" better than I did, but then, she’s more familiar with its inspiration than I am, which probably makes a difference.

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