Kattas reviewed Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Review of 'Her Body and Other Parties' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A fantastic view of old stories, beautifully and sensually rendered. The parenthetical instructions add so much vividness to the scenes, and a beautiful degree of metafictional interest.
Merged review:
This book reads like poetry while providing a fresh look at magical and legendary elements in tactile and immediate settings. The stories are at once dark and illuminating, ethereal and fleetingly beautiful, filled with visceral, bloody hyperrealism. The themes of the stories are significant given the context of the book's release: women looking for their voices, struggling to find themselves, to be heard, to be understood, to find freedom from social expectations and demands, to find space, to escape, to exist; men seeking to understand themselves, the women around them, to know the unknown and unknowable about their female partners and counterparts; sex, monsters, and other things that entrance and frighten us.
Lyrical, heady, intense, arousing, enchanting, and at times both …
A fantastic view of old stories, beautifully and sensually rendered. The parenthetical instructions add so much vividness to the scenes, and a beautiful degree of metafictional interest.
Merged review:
This book reads like poetry while providing a fresh look at magical and legendary elements in tactile and immediate settings. The stories are at once dark and illuminating, ethereal and fleetingly beautiful, filled with visceral, bloody hyperrealism. The themes of the stories are significant given the context of the book's release: women looking for their voices, struggling to find themselves, to be heard, to be understood, to find freedom from social expectations and demands, to find space, to escape, to exist; men seeking to understand themselves, the women around them, to know the unknown and unknowable about their female partners and counterparts; sex, monsters, and other things that entrance and frighten us.
Lyrical, heady, intense, arousing, enchanting, and at times both uncomfortable and familiar, Machado's stories demand attention and inspire simultaneous awe and nostalgia.
