Her Body And Other Parties

I'm not usually one for anthologies but I'd heard too many good things about this book to not give it a try.
I felt like I was reading a Black Mirror episode with every story in the best way possible.
We started off strong, hit a bit of a bump in the middle but ended pretty well.
As a whole I would say I enjoyed this collection.
Below is a detailed “review” and rating for each of the stories with spoilers. 


The Husband Stitch: 4 stars.  How bizarre of a story. It elicited so much emotion for being as vague as it was. I felt my pulse quickening, my stomach dropping. While involving the fantastical elements of a world that's just slightly different than ours all of the stories our main character tells us still feel so realistic.  The selfishness of her husband, the fixation on her ribbon, the blatant disrespect of her wishes, the very evident connection and illusion to consent, of how men take what is not theirs to be taken.  I'm left confused as to what the ribbons in varying locations of the body indicate, but the metaphor of the ribbon as a whole was beautifully done. 
Inventory: 4.5 stars.  This has no right being as good as it was for how short it was.  We're literally just going through each of our main characters sexual partners throughout her life. But it's such a beautiful slice of life into those most intimate experiences    I don't know if I like the virus aspect more or less than I might have had I read this when it was originally teleased  in 2017 before the Covid outbreak. I actually had to check the publication year because I thought they were referencing Covid. It just makes it hit that much harder though now that we have had that experience. 

Mothers: 2 Stars  This one wasn't for me.  It left me confused and not in a good way like The Husband Stitch. I still don't know what was happening or what it meant and while the writing was still flowery and beautiful it felt like almost too much. 
Especially Heinous: 3.5 Stars Love the concept, little episode summaries that collectively tell a story.  Law and Order SVU meets Twilight Zone. The doppelgänger situation was kind of meh for me but I actually loved that all of the victims wound up in Benson's head telling her how to help them find peace. That was really freaking cool.  Also I looked up the real SVU episodes and they're all the same in the book. Including some of the same plots which I thought was cool.  It got a bit sluggish in the middle and I found myself counting how much longer we had to go. I understand that we're doing every episode in what was 12 seasons (at the time) but it started to drag after awhile.  But at the end it picked up again for me and I liked the end of it. 
Real Women Have Bodies: 3 Stars This one was just real fucking sad. It made me think of couples where one of them has cancer and is slowly withering away.  It was just heartbreaking.  And on a deeper level so meaningful and terrifying g that women are just randomly fading away and no one knows why or even really cares.  Because that's just how society would be if there was something that actually caused our female population to randomly wither away. Most of them wouldn't give a shit and wouldn't try to fix it. 
Eight Bites: 4 Stars I don't know how to put my thoughts into words about this one.  I just loved the message of how even when you hate your body she still loves you. Like our bodies are so amazing with all the things they can do and no matter how much we may dislike what we see when we look in the mirror are body still keeps doing everything she needs to do to keep us alive. She keeps us going no matter how awful we are to her. Until one day she cannot keep going anymore and that apology at the end was like a knife to the heart.  Our bodies deserve so much more love than we can ever give them. 
The Resident: 3.75 Stars I am a sucker for camp and retreat stories. I eat them up. So this was right up my alley. And it had me. Until the end. I didn't like the ambiguous ending. I didn't quite get it. I have theories that our main character was never actually married, she was actually insane after all and had stalked this woman she thought was her wife. But then it all just ended, so abruptly without explanation.
Difficult at Parties: 3.5 Stars This one was also confusing. But I think I understood what it was trying to say. Maybe it's up for interpretation and I just interpreted it a certain way? But it made it impactful for me. Seeing our main character truly become a shell of herself was truly heart breaking.