I rarely agree with blurb on the front cover of books – but in the case of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body & Other Parties I can only concur: “brilliantly inventive”.
This is a raw roller-coaster of a read which takes no prisoners. It shies away from nothing; indeed, Machado deliberately goes deep into her protagonists’ psyche, their traumas and experiences; she peels back layers of surface to expose what lies beneath. I’m not sure I have ever read anything quite like it.
Not a comfortable read – but a very good one.
Ian Gouge - Writer 