The other day, as a friend of mine looked over my desk, his eyes fell on my copy of Carmen Maria Machedo’s Her Body and Other Parties. “Other Parties?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing closer together and his lips tightening downward into an uncomfortable frown, “What does that even mean?” Excited at the opportunity to talk about the book I found so perfectly stunning, I began trying to explain the way that Machedo’s stories strike at the ways that women and queer folk seek to exist within themselves under the all-out assault on the queer and female body. But as I searched for the words to lay this all out in front of the quizzical man before me, I found myself at a loss for the right words. How do you describe something so personal, so intimate, so terrifying to someone who will likely never understand? If there is anybody who could find the right words, it’s Carmen Maria Machado.
Image via Graywolf Press
In Machado’s debut collection of short stories, her exquisite prose launches us into fairy tales which bear no resemblance to the Disney-fied stories that little girls hear today and that more closely echo the thrillingly gruesome narratives of the Grimm Brothers. Tales of a woman who refuses her husbands requests to unravel the green ribbon which encircles her neck, a girl’s discovery of something terrifying sewn into the folds of delicate dresses, and the lurking presence of an unwanted house guest after a weight-reduction surgery all left me feeling a little sick to my stomach but nonetheless delighted. The tales each have that effect, simultaneously delicious and sharp, as if eating a decadent pastry after dropping it in the dirt, the sweet warmth mingling in your mouth alongside the metallic taste of rock and the crunch of gravel between your teeth.
Each story grasps at the true experience of existing inside of the female body, and perhaps more necessary, within her mind. With astonishing variety, Machedo writes fantasies that simultaneously undulate with desire, shine with a sinister beauty, and touch upon deep-seeded fears. No stranger to the horror genre, Machedo toys with elements of horror in stories such as “Eight Bites” and “Especially Heinous,” throwing aside conventional tools of surprise and thrill and choosing instead to allow fear to settle deep in your gut.
“Especially Heinous,” in which Machedo reimagines nearly 300 episodes of Law & Order: SVU in a terrifically weird way, is a fantastic example of the eclecticism of her stories. Each is nothing like the last and the entire collection sets itself apart as entirely imaginative and unlike anything I’ve ever read before.
Her Body and Other Parties is perfect (not a term I use lightly), bringing together stories that are altogether sexy, sinister, inventive, and horrifying, leaving me deeply disturbed but absolutely enchanted at the turn of every page. An incredible new voice in fiction, Machedo brings together a set of entirely unfamiliar fictions, though many readers may be shocked at just how familiar her observations are.