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.Ī wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own.
If Machado's heroines are madwomen, it's because they come up against questions like these, and don't so much go off a cliff as realize that living in this world requires dissociation, fantasy, and extreme psychological measures.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. Why are women raped and killed? That's where the brain sticks. Though it doesn't have the narrative energy of the other stories, "Especially Heinous" does create a slight estrangement from our culture that allows us to see that culture afresh, and be reminded of the kinds of questions that trip up the brain of any reasonable person: Why do we watch shows about women being raped and killed? Because women are raped and killed. It splits open like a body that's been in the Hudson." Meanwhile, Benson and Stabler are pursued by shadowy dopplegangers called Henson and Abler. She throws it into a garbage can and it hits the empty bottom, wet and heavy. For instance, "Sophomore Jinx: The second time the basketball team covers up a murder, the coach decides he's finally had enough." Or "Stocks and Bondage: Benson takes the bag of rotten vegetables out of the trunk when Stabler isn't looking.
The longest story is called "Especially Heinous" and is a series of short, increasingly absurd summaries of fake Law & Order: SVU episodes. in a way that reinforces the sincere uncanny power and reach of those stories. Enshrines a particular kind of young female culture - ghost stories, girl scout camp stories, urban legends.
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