8 impeccable weird stories. ( )

I have actually quite ambivalent feelings about this book, but there's parts that I think are gonna stick with me for quite a while. It's very much a book of ghosts, of isolated (alienated?) women, a book that on paper I'd adore, but something about the execution here didn't always quite click for me. I liked, in some way or another, almost all the stories, but "The Husband Stitch" left me cold.
Also, it is weird/interesting/affirming to read the work of someone who, I think, has an unusually similar frame of reference, literarily at least, to my own. Like, gay Shirley Jackson fans with feelings about being fat girls unite. ( )

“Especially Heinous” is probably the most compelling piece of fiction I’ve read all year.

I’ve heard so many people raving about this lately that I was excepting to love it- but very honestly this just wasn’t for me, almost in any way. To be blunt: I actually felt nauseous reading some of the stories. Not because of any particular graphic content, but because I genuinely could NOT understand what I was reading, or because I felt like I was losing my mind and reading the same story over and over again. While there are smatterings here and there of originality (like the twist of the classic ribbon story, or the women fading and becoming parts of garments) I was vastly underwhelmed by the plots, and at other times felt as if Machado had written down bizarre dream she had had and then edited nothing- “Mothers” and “Especially Heinous” felt like outright fever dreams to me.

I think how much a reader enjoys this book is going to be a hugely personal experience and going to lean heavily on personal tastes and aesthetics. I know, I know, that’s the case with like, ALL books, but this is just a very specific sort of book. While the overall premise of “stories that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their body” sort of hints at something many women will be able to relate to, there is obviously no one singular and universal experience of being a woman, so in turn there are clearly readers who won’t jive with this (myself included).
So while I admire the risks taken in “Her Body”, it’s not a book I can say I liked, or would feel comfortable recommending to many people. ( )

Creepy and satisfying. ( )