Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

　　今年度最受矚目的短篇小說傑作選

　　殘酷而華麗，奇幻、大膽卻又與現實疊合，令人戰慄地精采！



　　Carmen Maria Machado的短篇小說選，帶來8個奇異、充滿想像力的故事，透過將恐怖故事的元素與女人每日生活中的危機結合，她的故事踏出了驚人的、女權主義的一步，也拓展了當代小說的視野，建構了一個詭異而華美的世界。



　　在〈The Husband Stitch〉裡，透過知名的〈The Green Ribbon〉──描述了一個脖子上總是繫著綠絲帶的女孩的都市傳說，Machado呈現了其中隱藏的性慾，以及社會對女性身體所主張的權利；〈Difficult at Parties〉中，一個女人努力從被性侵的遭遇中恢復，她觀看色情片，希望這能讓她重建和男友的關係，卻發現自己居然可以聽見螢幕中演員的思緒；〈Especially Heinous〉則是改寫了12季、近300集電視劇《法律與秩序：特殊受害人》，轉化成一個充滿想像力的警探故事，充斥著鬼魂和分身……。



　　Machado擅於描述絕望，以及人們對自己身體的憤怒，她精於流暢地使用童話故事的語言，並將童話的各種元素重新組合成自己的版本──在古老的傳說裡，女人被高塔、被咒語所困，而在Machado的故事中，恐懼就是咒語，她們的心靈就是困囿自己的城牆。我們看見她筆下角色所做不到的事、能力所及的盡頭──在那其中，一些最可怕的怪物由此而生。(文/博客來編譯)

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

" These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange."--Roxane Gay

"In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories and hunger and desire. I couldn't put it down."--Karen Russell

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we na vely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelg ngers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Carmen Maria Machado’s work has appeared in Granta, TheNew Yorker, NPR, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Nebula Award and a Shirley Jackson Award, and was a finalist for the Calvino Prize. She lives in Philadelphia.