A woman wears a green ribbon around her neck her entire life and refuses to explain why, even to the husband who loves her. A plague slowly erases people, one body part at a time, while the survivors go on shopping and dating as if nothing has changed. Twelve seasons of Law & Order: SVU are rewritten as unsettling prose poems. Carmen Maria Machado's debut story collection, published in 2017, was a National Book Award finalist and won a shelf's worth of genre and literary prizes at once -- an unusual double win that speaks to how deliberately the book refuses to sit still in one category. This review works from what The Guardian and the National Book Foundation actually said, the real Goodreads numbers, and where even admiring readers found the eight stories uneven -- so you know exactly what you're getting before you pick it up.
What Her Body and Other Parties Actually Is
This is a collection of eight short stories, not a novel, and that structural fact shapes everything about how to approach it: each story resets its world, its narrator, and often its entire genre. The opening story, "The Husband Stitch," follows a woman with a green ribbon tied around her neck through marriage, motherhood, and a husband who can't stop asking to untie it, layering a well-known campfire ghost story onto a meditation on what wives are expected to give up without question. "Especially Heinous" rewrites 272 fictional episodes of Law & Order: SVU as short, surreal fragments, turning a real television procedural into something closer to horror poetry about the show's relationship to violence against women. Other stories move through body horror, a fading world in "Inventory," and a plague narrative that never explains itself, unified less by plot than by a recurring, unblinking attention to women's bodies -- what's done to them, what's expected of them, and what pleasure and danger look like from inside one.
Machado explicitly builds the collection out of genre -- horror, ghost story, erotica, science fiction, fairy tale -- rather than treating those forms as lesser cousins to literary fiction. The book wears its genre roots proudly rather than smuggling them in, which is part of why reviewers repeatedly described it as formally daring: it refuses the usual hierarchy that keeps "literary" and "genre" fiction in separate lanes.
About Carmen Maria Machado and Why She Wrote This
Machado is a queer writer based in Philadelphia, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has held a writer-in-residence position at the University of Pennsylvania. Her Body and Other Parties was her debut book, and it announced her, immediately, as a writer working confidently across horror, science fiction, and literary tradition at once rather than choosing one lane. She's spoken about wanting to write fiction that takes queer women's desire and bodily experience seriously as a subject worthy of the same formal ambition typically reserved for more conventional literary material, and about her love of genre fiction -- ghost stories, horror, erotica -- as tools rather than guilty pleasures to be kept separate from "serious" writing. Two years after this collection, she published In the Dream House, a genre-bending memoir about an abusive relationship with a female partner, which became a critical and commercial success in its own right and is a separate book from this one, covering entirely different ground.
How It Compares to In the Dream House
In the Dream House is nonfiction -- a memoir about a specific abusive relationship, structured around a different narrative trope in nearly every chapter. Her Body and Other Parties is fiction, a set of eight distinct short stories with no single connecting narrative. What they share is Machado's formal restlessness: both books refuse a single genre framework and instead borrow deliberately from horror, fairy tale, and academic or pop-cultural forms to say something a straightforward narrative couldn't. If you loved In the Dream House's structural inventiveness, this earlier collection is where that same instinct first showed up fully formed, applied to fiction rather than memoir.
What Critics Actually Said
Rather than inventing a verdict, here's what was actually published about it:
“A writer of rare daring...there is a ragged glory to [the stories'] formal experimentation and erotic fearlessness, and the gusto with which they reinvent horror, SF and fairytale tropes.”— Justine Jordan, The Guardian
“A love letter to an obstinate genre that won't be gentrified.”— Justine Jordan, The Guardian
That critical enthusiasm was matched by unusually broad award recognition spanning both literary and genre institutions: the collection was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction, and it went on to win the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize for best debut, the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Single-Author Collection (a major honor specifically for horror and dark fiction), the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and an Indies Choice Book Award. Winning both a National Book Award finalist slot and a genre-specific prize like the Shirley Jackson Award in the same cycle is genuinely rare -- most books land solidly in one camp or the other.
And the aggregate reader picture, for what it's worth:
Where Real Reviews Pushed Back
The most consistent, specific criticism across reader and critic reviews alike is unevenness: with eight distinct stories in wildly different modes, not every piece lands with the same force. "The Husband Stitch" and "Especially Heinous" are the two most frequently singled out as standouts, while several of the shorter, more experimental pieces -- particularly the more abstract, fragmentary stories later in the collection -- get noted as harder to connect with or less memorable by comparison. Some readers also flag the collection's sustained focus on sexual violence and bodily horror as genuinely difficult, sometimes exhausting material to move through story after story, even when they admire the craft behind it. This is a real, recurring account from engaged readers, not a dismissal of a widely honored book, and worth knowing if you're the kind of reader who wants every story in a collection to hit equally hard.
On Genre as a Serious Literary Tool
What sets this collection apart from most literary short fiction is how unapologetically it uses genre conventions -- ghost stories, body horror, erotica, dystopian plague narrative -- as its actual working method rather than as ironic distance from "real" literature. "Especially Heinous" is the clearest example: taking a real, long-running crime procedural and rewriting hundreds of its episodes as unsettling fragmented prose is a genre experiment few literary writers would attempt, let alone pull off. Critics repeatedly cited this genre-blending as the collection's most significant achievement, treating horror and fairy tale not as lesser forms elevated by literary technique but as forms already equipped to say something true about violence against women that straight realism sometimes can't reach as directly.
On Women's Bodies as the Collection's Real Subject
Every story in the collection returns, in some form, to what happens to and inside women's bodies -- desire, violence, illness, transformation, disappearance. That focus is deliberate and sustained rather than incidental, and it's part of why the collection reads as a unified project despite its wildly varied genres and settings. Machado doesn't offer easy resolution to the violence her characters face; several stories end in ambiguity or open threat rather than catharsis, which is part of what critics meant by calling the collection formally and emotionally fearless.
Key Takeaways
- This is a short story collection of eight distinct pieces, not a novel -- expect a different tone and genre in nearly every story
- It was a genuine 2017 National Book Award for Fiction finalist and won the Shirley Jackson Award, an unusual double recognition spanning literary and genre prizes
- The Guardian called Machado "a writer of rare daring," specifically praising her formal experimentation and genre reinvention
- The most consistent reader criticism is unevenness across the eight stories, with "The Husband Stitch" and "Especially Heinous" most frequently named as standouts
- It's a separate, unrelated book from Machado's later memoir In the Dream House -- fiction, not memoir, published two years earlier
Who This Book Is Actually For
Readers who want formally inventive short fiction that treats horror, fairy tale, and genre conventions as serious literary tools -- particularly anyone drawn to unflinching writing about women's bodies, desire, and violence. It also rewards readers who came to Machado through In the Dream House and want to see the same structural daring applied to fiction.
Who Should Read Something Else Instead
If you want every story in a collection to land with equal force, the documented unevenness above is worth taking seriously -- a few pieces here are stronger than others. And if sustained, graphic material about sexual violence and bodily harm across multiple stories sounds like too much right now, this is a legitimate reason to choose something gentler first.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Genuine 2017 National Book Award for Fiction finalist -- real, documented literary recognition for a debut collection
- Won the Shirley Jackson Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction
- Positive Guardian review calling Machado "a writer of rare daring"
- Formally inventive, genre-spanning stories rarely attempted this confidently in a single collection
- Unflinching, technically accomplished writing about women's bodies and desire
Cons:
- Multiple reviews note the eight stories are uneven in strength, with a few landing more powerfully than others
- Sustained focus on sexual violence and bodily horror across the collection can be a genuinely heavy, exhausting read
- The most experimental pieces demand real patience and may not appeal to readers who want conventional narrative
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Her Body and Other Parties connected to In the Dream House?
No -- they're separate books by the same author. This is a short story collection published in 2017; In the Dream House is a memoir about an abusive relationship published in 2019. They share themes but tell entirely different, unrelated content.
What's the actual Goodreads rating?
3.80 out of 5 from more than 106,000 ratings as of this writing. Check the live number yourself via the source link below, since it keeps moving.
Did this book win any major awards?
It was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction and won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Single-Author Collection, the Bard Fiction Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.
What's the most common criticism of this book?
That the eight stories are uneven in strength -- several reviewers single out "The Husband Stitch" and "Especially Heinous" as standouts while noting a few of the shorter, more experimental pieces land less powerfully by comparison.
Sources & Further Reading
- Goodreads — Her Body and Other Parties (aggregate rating, reader reviews)
- The Guardian — review by Justine Jordan
- National Book Foundation — 2017 National Book Award for Fiction finalist listing
- Shirley Jackson Awards — Best Single-Author Collection winner listing
- Carmen Maria Machado — official author site
- PositiveLifes.com — free inspirational and life-changing PDF books
Final Verdict
Her Body and Other Parties backs up its striking premise with real, wide-ranging recognition -- a National Book Award finalist slot, a Shirley Jackson Award win, and a Guardian review calling Machado a writer of rare daring. The documented unevenness across its eight stories is real and worth knowing, but even the weaker entries here are doing something few collections attempt: treating horror and fairy tale as serious tools for writing about women's bodies rather than genre novelties. Read it for "The Husband Stitch" alone, and you'll likely stay for the rest.
Buy Day rating: 8.5/10