Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado     Audio Book:  8 hours, 30 mins.     Paperback Book:  248 pages        

This book is like walking through someone else’s dreams.   The stories blend so effortlessly into one another like the surreal state of unconsciousness of being the character in a number of varying scenarios all in one night.    Each dream as I will call them to best express the lightness of being that they are,  like a will o’ the wisp racing through the forest lighting here and there in different locals with different flora, some areas dark like bogs, some light from the moon and stars above, some scary, some romantic even erotic yet all blending into one another like watercolors on a canvas. But, these stories, musings, speak pain and pleasure,  love and hate,  they bounce around as though you are in the authors brain wandering through her thoughts.   Each only a moment then gone like cotton candy melts on  the tongue, so sweet and flavorful but gone as quick as you taste it.   The stories here are like a flower growing from the ground up then budding then blooming then just a memory but so many distinct memories.   Her work is hard to define, it is both a psychological study with underpinnings of the paranormal.   Is the boogey man real or is the narrator of all the stories the boogey man?     From fixations on a hair ribbon to lovers to plagues to self-esteem.   Is there an unspeakable crime happening in the prom dress section of a store?   Can the detectives of the t.v. show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit clear it up.   I think Timothy Leary would have really enjoyed this book.     It strikes me it is very much like some of his mental adventures.     Real yet vague, in your face then out the door.    It lulls you along then leaves the reader wandering what just happened and am I still where I was?    Very Alice in Wonderland through the looking glass and viewing the world from the Madhatter’s eyes looking back on this side of the mirror.   Often unsettling and uncomfortable like a dream you want to wake up from but it just keeps going.    Honestly, I was glad to be done with this book.   I can’t say I liked it, but, I also can’t deny it is very thought provoking and haunting, just a little too disjointed for me.