Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

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In her 2011 publication, Aggressive Fiction: Reading the Contemporary American Novel, Kathryn Hume makes the comment that when reading subversive texts, “To the degree that we are willing to let our conditioned barriers down, we can experience vicariously the sense of freedom that discarding that training might produce. Inventory” lists a woman’s erotic experiences, from the first inklings of desire in childhood, through memories of lovers both male and female, as a virus depopulates the world and any chance of physical connection dwindles. My body changes in ways I do not expect – my breasts are large, swollen and hot, my stomach lined with pale marks, the inverse of a tiger’s. The collection won the Shirley Jackson Award, [2] and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. I know that I should not want her, not because she is a woman and not because she is a stranger, but because it is her job to disrobe, and I feel shame taking advantage of such a state.

I pointed the knife at him and told him to walk and keep walking, and if he even looked back, I would end him. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. The voice on the radio announced that a mad, hook-handed murderer had escaped from a local insane asylum.Silence and sound bumped up against each other but never intermingled; the jolly chaos of warm summer nights was as far away as it could be. When the notice come over the radio that the virus had somehow reached Nebraska, I realized I had to go east, and so I did. He is hard and hot and dry and smells like bread, and when he breaks me I scream and cling to him like I am lost at sea. A woman passing by helps me to sit up and gives me some water, telling me that the first pregnancy is always the worst. Our mugs ran dry, and when we looked for the waitress, she was watching the breaking news on the battered TV hanging from the ceiling.

He told me about how he walked through Chicago, actually through it, and how they had stopped bothering to dispose of the bodies after a while. That night, after my son is in bed, my husband reaches his hand across the couch and slides it up my leg. I believe she selected a very old one, her choice tinged by self-doubt and the latent belief that if she were wrong, the intact muscle and flesh of a newly dead corpse would be more dangerous than one centuries gone. I did not mention that I’d found my mother dead, nor the three days afterward I’d spent with anxious doctors checking my eyes for the early symptoms, nor how I’d managed to escape the quarantine zone.Then her face slips somewhere else for a moment, as if she has dipped beneath the surface of a lake. If you are reading this story out loud, force a listener to reveal a secret, then open the nearest window to the street and scream it as loudly as you are able. The Husband Stitch" deals with what it's like to be a woman in a man's world, where even 'the good ones' fall into the system of control and domination. Through Germain’s knives, through windows of perception, we travel deep into the abhorrent realities so many have chosen not to see or to believe. Find your next must-read with the Serpent’s Tail newsletter and discover gripping crime and mystery from Viper Books.

Sex and death are the dominant themes, with two stories charting passion against the backdrop of apocalypse. I try to hold him and kiss him, but he only wishes to go out onto the street, where the sun has dipped below the horizon and a hazy chill is bruising the shadows. I’m not sure that I know what this means It seems to fit with the idea of her having become estranged from her own ability to mother but I don’t understand why this has become immortal or what that means or why this part of the story is told in the future tense. It is our intent and purpose to foster and encourage in-depth discussion about all things related to books, authors, genres, or publishing in a safe, supportive environment. Difficult at Parties" is the most bleak and dark of all eight, dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence.

When he first showed up at my doorstep, I assumed he was there to evacuate me, but it turned out he’d abandoned his post. She’s like dough, how the give of it beneath kneading hands disguises its sturdiness, its potential. Mostly it seems that women are falling victim to an unavoidable fate which leads me to think that this is a metaphor for America’s rape culture and normalisation of misogyny. I made her a drink—“More or less moonshine,” I said as I handed her the tumbler—and we sat at the table. I tell her that we have had no more children since our son, and now that he has started school, my days will be altered toward sloth and boredom.

Despite her objections, her husband becomes obsessed with trying to touch and loosen the ribbon and tries at any chance he can get. He is too young to catch a ball, still, but my husband patiently rolls it to him in the grass, and our son picks it up and drops it again, and my husband gestures to me and cries Look, look! Afterwards, he slumps in the seat, and I can hear the sounds of the pond: loons and crickets, and something that sounds like a banjo being plucked.She looked at her boyfriend and then pulled her cardigan over her bare shoulders, wrapping one arm around her breasts.