Description: " Her Body and Other Parties , by Carmen Maria Machado, is a love letter to an obstinate genre that won''t be gentrified. It''s a wild thing, this book, covered in sequins and scales, blazing with the influence of fabulists from Angela Carter to Kelly Link and Helen Oyeyemi, and borrowing from science fiction, queer theory and horror. . . . Not since Karen Russell''s St. Lucy''s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves , in 2006, has a debut collection of short stories from a relatively unknown author garnered such attention, or deserved it more." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times "Carmen Maria Machado has managed to have readers, critics and everyone in-between sitting on the edge of their seats for the chance to read her debut story collection. . . . Part science fiction, part fantasy and all fun, Machado''s stories deal with the sometimes unbelievable reality of being a woman in a way you won''t see coming; in a way that is entirely her own." --NBC "Today Show" "[Machado''s] use of a vivid experimental lens to show women struggling for agency is startling." -- The New Yorker "An abrupt, original, and wild collection of stories, full of outlandish myths that somehow catch at familiar, unspoken truths about being women in the world that more straightforward or realist writing wouldn''t." --NPR.org "[ Her Body and Other Parties ] is that hallowed thing: an example of almost preposterous talent that also encapsulates something vital but previously diffuse about the moment. . . . Machado is a master of such pointed formal play, of queering genre and the supposed laws of reality to present alternative possibilities. . . . Machado reveals just how original, subversive, proud and joyful it can be to write from deep in the gut, even--especially--if the gut has been bruised." -- Los Angeles Times "[ Her Body and Other Parties is] written in prose so textured that you want to rub her phrases between your fingertips. . . . A muscular strain of feminism runs through this book, whose contemplation of the female body is bound up in sex, power, pleasure, pain, and the fitful struggle against self-loathing. Rarely is a writer as skilled as Machado at evoking corporeality: the myriad sensations of inhabiting flesh and bone, with all its messiness and ecstasies. . . . [Machado] blend[s] disparate, jostling elements to achieve a ferocious alchemy." -- The Boston Globe "The book abounds with fantastical premises that ring true because the intensity of sexual desire, the mutability of the body, and the realities of gender inequality make them so. . . . These stories stand as exquisitely rendered, poignant hauntings." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Cross-pollenating fairy tales, horror movies, TV shows, and a terrific sense of humor, [Machado''s] work reminds me at different times of such wildly divergent figures as David Lynch, Jane Campion, Maggie Nelson, and Grace Paley; which is a way of saying, Machado sounds like nobody but herself. . . . [An] imaginative and enjoyable collection, which charts dark territory with enormous style, wit, and storytelling panache." --John Powers, NPR "Fresh Air" " Her Body and Other Parties is an astonishing debut, dark and glittering, like a night, or a knife. The stories in this book unroll like millipedes, smooth shells of lyric giving way to sharp joints and flailing, alien limbs." -- Bookforum "Machado''s stories . . . have reverberated among readers with the prophetic force of a soothsayer''s divinations." -- Vulture "Imaginative, unsettling, haunting stories." -- BuzzFeed "With supernatural flair, an engaging pop culture awareness . . . and an intimate, unrelenting style that grabs you by the throat and sinks its perfectly-polished nails in, Machado explores ''femaleness'' in a way that makes women who evaporate or telepathically hear the thoughts of porn stars feel eerily, impossibly, like long-lost friends." -- Harper''s Bazaar "In her twistedly original and thrilling debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties , Carmen Maria Machado blends both the terrifying and the horrible into a psychologically realistic and darkly comic mixture. . . . Simultaneously hot and chilling, these stories leave the reader enthralled and shaken." -- Chicago Tribune "Thrilling and page-turning, smart and fearless, and very likely the best book of the year." -- Jezebel "Machado brushes past taboo to treat women''s sexuality with frankness and lyricism. . . . These daring stories are deeply feminist, but never dogmatically so, slipping into the murky places where we begin to fear our desires and desire what we fear." -- Slate "Between its covers, we find ourselves inside a gorgeously warped reflection of the world in which we actually live. It''s recognizable as our own, but everything is a little more lurid, a little more queer, a little more violent, a little more magical than what we''re used to." -- Nylon "It''s rare to discover an author who can catalyze a reader''s laughter and fear in mere pages, but Machado succeeds again and again, placing herself alongside names like Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Helen Oyeyemi and Karen Russell when it comes to genre-bending fiction with a dark bent. . . . This gloriously engaging and utterly queer collection is necessary reading." -- Paste "With her first book Machado has already emerged a master of several beloved genres. . . . Her work could be placed in conversation with a host of fiction writers who inscribe the walls of such stories with fairy-tale magic--Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Alexandra Kleeman, Aimee Bender, and Lesley Nneka Arimah come to mind. But there are stories here too that possess a courageous and indelible originality." -- The Village Voice "With Machado, everything feels razed and built anew. . . . [ Her Body and Other Parties ] feels determined to live well beyond annual prize-giving cycles, to become that classic misfit survivor that readers and writers keep returning to." -- Star Tribune (Minneapolis) "Machado''s writing is full of repressed physical energy and the raw juice of annihilating female fury. The body is the subject, the culprit, the innocent. Standard accessories like ribbons become frightful. She does unimaginable things with a prom dress. But these stories are also funny--which really made me uneasy--because I could hear in my laugh that same squawk a tiny dog makes in moments of duress." --Louise Erdrich, The Millions "Her success comes not just from the strength of her voice, but from the idea that by recentering classic genre stories on the women who haunt their edges, and diving deep into their subconscious, territory still ripe for exploration will open up." -- Vox "The stories in this book are of the finest quality: sexy and threatening, strange and playful." -- Literary Hub " Her Body and Other Parties is a masterful assemblage of tales that is at once luminous and dingy, sexy and terrifying, queer and mundane. These wondrous stories remind readers not only that the lives of women are full of paradoxes and contradictions, but that fiction as an endeavor is especially powerful when it takes as its task the examination of these ambiguities." -- The Rumpus "Machado''s first collection of short fiction is finally here for all to enjoy and marvel at. . . . Surreal and subversive, this debut standsout no matter the company." -- W Magazine "A refreshing--and provocative--read." -- The Nation "She writes with a sincerity I didn''t realize I was missing until I found it in these pages; it''s rare to encounter an articulation of feminist themes that isn''t self-conscious of them. . . . Machado''s work, like her characters, is accessible and nuanced, textured without being overwrought." --Lauren Kane, The Paris Review Staff Picks "Carmen Maria Machado is an Angela Carter for 2017: Both of them have a distinctively gothic, bloody, dark fairy tale sensibility, but unlike Carter, Machado is overtly queer, feminist, and body-positive. What''s most striking about Machado''s [ Her Body and Other Parties ] . . . is how insistently her women are embodied , and how clearly their oppression manifests itself on their bodies." -- Vox "Machado''s debut is the most blisteringly brilliant story collection of the fall." -- Book Riot "All good story collections are in some sense unified by a style or theme that binds the book together, but few cohere with as much force and energy as this book. . . . Her Body and Other Parties is an artful powerhouse and a writing textbook rolled into one. It is fearsome and fearless. It is a book that won''t be forgotten." -- Los Angeles Review of Books "Her work is brazenly unapologetic, or perhaps unapologetically brazen. Her fearlessness, combined with some spellbinding writing, delivers stories that are at once discomfiting and revelatory." -- Washington Independent Review of Books "Artfully structured stories. . . . [Her Body and Other Parties is] a vibrant collection that presents women in their vulnerabilities and strengths in relationships with men, in relationships with other women, and in reflection upon their own bodies as they sort through the social conventions that have long stifled their full expression of s

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