First published 2017
In this electric debut, Carmen Maria Machado bends genre to map the realities of women's lives. A wife refuses to remove a green ribbon. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague consumes humanity. A salesclerk makes a horrifying mall discovery. One woman's weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. Through it all, Machado explores the violence done to women's bodies, generating phantasmagoric narratives that haunt the mind.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: surreal, unreliable-narrator
248 pages · Paperback · Graywolf Press
Content warnings: body-horror, graphic-violence, sexual-content