PositiveThe Kenyon ReviewAlthough not all the stories in Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties reach the accumulative electricity of its first tale, \'The Husband Stitch,\' this is not uncommon in a short fiction collection; it also has a lot to do with the fact that this particular story is just so darn good ... All this talk of the body leads me to another thing that’s refreshing about her stories: yes, sex—ugly, beautiful, un-airbrushed intercourse...highlights a haunting conclusion that Machado leaves us with: that we are all simultaneously both mother and daughter, creator and created, container and contained, attic and mad woman.
