Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
Carmen Maria Machado’s debut story collection is a thunderclap. Blending the intimate and the fantastical, the most personal revelations with the most speculative of fictions, Machado expands what short fiction can do. Her characters explore sexual desires while fleeing deadly viruses that promise human extinction. They try to control the shapes of their bodies but cannot control the phantom children living in their basements. With gorgeous, muscular language and mordant wit, Machado pulls us into her world—one of corporeal longing and spiritual hunger, a sensual and gothic-tinged alternate reality both dangerous and addictive.