Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The next sentence often qualifies the inventory “One boy, one girl. Each encounter starts with a sentence inventorying who was involved in addition to the narrator: “One girl.” “One boy, one girl”, “Two boys, one girl”. I found the style of the storytelling hypnotic, It is presented as an inventory of encounters with always-nameless lovers: men and woman singly or in combinations. I read it twice, not because I didn’t understand it the first time but because there is so much there that once just wasn’t enough to absorb it. This story has a dense mass to it that lodged in my imagination, demanding attention and thought.

“Inventory”, the second story in this collection, is about thirteen pages long and fine example of the fact that short stories, even ones as short as this are not literary snacks that you consume between novels. “Her Body And Other Parties” is such a rich collection that I’m reviewing it one story at a time, mostly to enhance my enjoyment and understanding of these stories.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado