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spiral_fracture's review against another edition
good, but a bit much for me, at least right now
crystaltheacademic's review against another edition
Short story collections are not for me I learned. Also it was all a little too abstract for my tastes
emath98's review against another edition
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
drsurgeonguy's review against another edition
5.0
A book that seems very experimental, and it's amazing for the most parts, some misses, but that's to be expected.
best book that has like, sex on every page, that I've ever read.
Also the ocean is a lesbian.
best book that has like, sex on every page, that I've ever read.
Also the ocean is a lesbian.
desireeslibrary's review against another edition
4.0
"I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them."
As with most collections of stories, I absolutely LOVED some and didn't really like others at all. Machado masterfully emphasizes the violence that we put on women's bodies. Whether that be sexual or physical violence, violence put on us by society, or violence that we put on ourselves. So queer, so feminist, so beautiful and haunting. This will stick with me for a very long time.
As with most collections of stories, I absolutely LOVED some and didn't really like others at all. Machado masterfully emphasizes the violence that we put on women's bodies. Whether that be sexual or physical violence, violence put on us by society, or violence that we put on ourselves. So queer, so feminist, so beautiful and haunting. This will stick with me for a very long time.
sarahs_bookdragon's review against another edition
5.0
A refreshing, surreal, eerie, sexual presentation of the public perspective on the female body and experience. Machado highlights aspects of the female experience that are neglected or forgotten through bizarre, vivid, and fantastical plots.
Fairytales provide a primary lens for exploring perspectives on females. While fairytales are typically avenues to subtly introduce adult horrors to children, Machado uses them as framing for horrific treatment of women. Women rarely fair well in folk tales, which is highlighted in the first short story “The Husband Stitch”, throughout which the narrator breaks from the storyline to tell a story where some female, girlfriend, bride, wife, or mother experiences tragedy; the placement eerily matching the narrator’s own progression from girl to mother.
“Especially Heinous” is a contemporary tale reimagined: 272 episodes of Law & Order: SVU rewritten with unreal elements to draw attention to the show’s, the viewers’, and NYC’s addiction for brutally murdering and abusing women. The characters suffer because the audience watches--why does the public crave female torture?
“The Husband Stitch” in particular transforms the story of The Girl With the Green Ribbon into a female narrative. Rather than using the literal female body to define a female, women wear a ribbon. Men in the main character’s life grow to see the ribbon--to want to touch it, remove it, know what it is. Despite everything the main character gives, her husband--whom she previously said was right for her, and a good man--still asks to know the secret. “My body rebels wildly, still throbbing with the memories of pleasure but bucking hard against betrayal…‘After these many years, is that what you want of me?’”
There are also several instances throughout the collection where female sanity is brought into question. A female’s “insanity” stems from limited trust in a world created for and by man. The trusted doctor and husband in “The Husband Stitch” take advantage of the main character’s post-birth state to give her “the husband stitch,” a dangerous extra stitch to supposedly increase the man’s pleasure during intercourse.
One of the urban legends told in “The Husband Stitch” involves a daughter seeking help from a doctor in an unfamiliar city, and being forced to go from person to person in order to save her sick mother--only to find the mother vanished and everyone claiming she never existed. The daughter was forced to trust those around her, and she ended up losing everything. There is no one ending to the story. Is the daughter validated by discovering the ridiculous subplot erasing her mother from existence in order to keep a deadly disease under wraps? Is she crazy for wandering the city, searching for her non-existent mother?
Perhaps the most “insane” character is featured in “The Resident.” The protagonist is among a select group of artists to take residence in a remote hotel for a few weeks in order to focus on their creations. She becomes an outcast not taken seriously. After reading an example of the main character’s work, one resident, Lydia, asks her if she worries that she is (writing) the “madwoman-in-the-attic” trope. A trope Lydia considers “tiresome and regressive and, well, done.” The main character clarifies her character as a version of herself, to which Lydia responds: “So don’t write about yourself.” This indicates the dangers of boxing women into such tropes. Calling the protagonist a madwoman-in-the-attic dismisses her, boxes her up into a neat package to hide away in the attic storage.
But Machado used more than side-by-side fairytale comparisons to cleverly frame her stories.
My favorite story was “Inventory;” the primary reason being the presentation of events. One moment, you’re reading a list, an inventory, of all the protagonist’s past sexual partners. Through subtle details, you eventually realize that behind these sexual experiences is a plague that wipes out humanity. This is a unique and exciting way to tell an apocalypse story: one that touches on what it means to be female, what it means to be human, and what it means for the non-apocalyptic aspects of life to be experienced--or not--when tragedy strikes. Though I have never asked myself “how would my sex life be affected by the apocalypse?”, Machado approaches another question: “how would the human experience be affected by the apocalypse?” While scientists searching for a cure and rash decision-making military officials are exciting, those stories have been told before, and they are less relevant to the everyday person. One character, a CDC employee, says that the disease spreads through touch, so people ought to just stop touching one another. This is while she is snuggled up with the protagonist after sex. How do human habits and activities fare in the face of apocalypse? Can we stop? Machado’s exploration of desire, and the perseverance of normal human activities despite circumstances, is a thread cleverly spun throughout her stories.
Such a theme begins with Machado’s unapologetic inclusion of sex and sexuality. The shift between heterosexual and homosexual relationships was as easy as breathing--which is rare in literature and media. Additionally, all characters were comfortable with their sexuality. Whether introverted or extroverted, experienced or inexperienced, sexual pleasure was simply there, a part of everyday human experience. Importantly, Machado normalizes the female orgasm. From “Real Women have Bodies” with the climax description “like a bottle breaking against a brick wall”, to “Inventory” with its several sexual encounters. Machado depicts her characters’ experiences fully: the complex, vivid, grotesque, and passionate aspects of life.
For writers, perhaps the most important takeaway is the use of surreal elements to draw attention to hidden aspects of the female, LGBT, and human experience without overpowering the narrative--social commentary under the radar. In “Eight Bites,” after a surgery to “fix” the main character into a perfectly skinny mother, she very literally abuses her body (a faceless creature, the character’s body without everything it needs). Such framing is akin to Alexander Calder’s “Kiki de montparnasse:” at first all you see is wires hanging from a ceiling, but with the right perspective, an image emerges.
Fairytales provide a primary lens for exploring perspectives on females. While fairytales are typically avenues to subtly introduce adult horrors to children, Machado uses them as framing for horrific treatment of women. Women rarely fair well in folk tales, which is highlighted in the first short story “The Husband Stitch”, throughout which the narrator breaks from the storyline to tell a story where some female, girlfriend, bride, wife, or mother experiences tragedy; the placement eerily matching the narrator’s own progression from girl to mother.
“Especially Heinous” is a contemporary tale reimagined: 272 episodes of Law & Order: SVU rewritten with unreal elements to draw attention to the show’s, the viewers’, and NYC’s addiction for brutally murdering and abusing women. The characters suffer because the audience watches--why does the public crave female torture?
“The Husband Stitch” in particular transforms the story of The Girl With the Green Ribbon into a female narrative. Rather than using the literal female body to define a female, women wear a ribbon. Men in the main character’s life grow to see the ribbon--to want to touch it, remove it, know what it is. Despite everything the main character gives, her husband--whom she previously said was right for her, and a good man--still asks to know the secret. “My body rebels wildly, still throbbing with the memories of pleasure but bucking hard against betrayal…‘After these many years, is that what you want of me?’”
There are also several instances throughout the collection where female sanity is brought into question. A female’s “insanity” stems from limited trust in a world created for and by man. The trusted doctor and husband in “The Husband Stitch” take advantage of the main character’s post-birth state to give her “the husband stitch,” a dangerous extra stitch to supposedly increase the man’s pleasure during intercourse.
One of the urban legends told in “The Husband Stitch” involves a daughter seeking help from a doctor in an unfamiliar city, and being forced to go from person to person in order to save her sick mother--only to find the mother vanished and everyone claiming she never existed. The daughter was forced to trust those around her, and she ended up losing everything. There is no one ending to the story. Is the daughter validated by discovering the ridiculous subplot erasing her mother from existence in order to keep a deadly disease under wraps? Is she crazy for wandering the city, searching for her non-existent mother?
Perhaps the most “insane” character is featured in “The Resident.” The protagonist is among a select group of artists to take residence in a remote hotel for a few weeks in order to focus on their creations. She becomes an outcast not taken seriously. After reading an example of the main character’s work, one resident, Lydia, asks her if she worries that she is (writing) the “madwoman-in-the-attic” trope. A trope Lydia considers “tiresome and regressive and, well, done.” The main character clarifies her character as a version of herself, to which Lydia responds: “So don’t write about yourself.” This indicates the dangers of boxing women into such tropes. Calling the protagonist a madwoman-in-the-attic dismisses her, boxes her up into a neat package to hide away in the attic storage.
But Machado used more than side-by-side fairytale comparisons to cleverly frame her stories.
My favorite story was “Inventory;” the primary reason being the presentation of events. One moment, you’re reading a list, an inventory, of all the protagonist’s past sexual partners. Through subtle details, you eventually realize that behind these sexual experiences is a plague that wipes out humanity. This is a unique and exciting way to tell an apocalypse story: one that touches on what it means to be female, what it means to be human, and what it means for the non-apocalyptic aspects of life to be experienced--or not--when tragedy strikes. Though I have never asked myself “how would my sex life be affected by the apocalypse?”, Machado approaches another question: “how would the human experience be affected by the apocalypse?” While scientists searching for a cure and rash decision-making military officials are exciting, those stories have been told before, and they are less relevant to the everyday person. One character, a CDC employee, says that the disease spreads through touch, so people ought to just stop touching one another. This is while she is snuggled up with the protagonist after sex. How do human habits and activities fare in the face of apocalypse? Can we stop? Machado’s exploration of desire, and the perseverance of normal human activities despite circumstances, is a thread cleverly spun throughout her stories.
Such a theme begins with Machado’s unapologetic inclusion of sex and sexuality. The shift between heterosexual and homosexual relationships was as easy as breathing--which is rare in literature and media. Additionally, all characters were comfortable with their sexuality. Whether introverted or extroverted, experienced or inexperienced, sexual pleasure was simply there, a part of everyday human experience. Importantly, Machado normalizes the female orgasm. From “Real Women have Bodies” with the climax description “like a bottle breaking against a brick wall”, to “Inventory” with its several sexual encounters. Machado depicts her characters’ experiences fully: the complex, vivid, grotesque, and passionate aspects of life.
For writers, perhaps the most important takeaway is the use of surreal elements to draw attention to hidden aspects of the female, LGBT, and human experience without overpowering the narrative--social commentary under the radar. In “Eight Bites,” after a surgery to “fix” the main character into a perfectly skinny mother, she very literally abuses her body (a faceless creature, the character’s body without everything it needs). Such framing is akin to Alexander Calder’s “Kiki de montparnasse:” at first all you see is wires hanging from a ceiling, but with the right perspective, an image emerges.
ehynds12's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
nictariine's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
danniest's review against another edition
I just don’t think i like short stories? I truly enjoyed her other book but this one just didn’t do it for me. especially after the SVU thing