This collection of short stories is a combination of fantasy, horror, and satire. Machado shows with graphic descriptions how society objectifies the female body. The collection’s cover features a Gray’s Anatomy picture of the human neck and a green ribbon that figures prominently in the first and most famous story, “The Husband Stitch.” To avoid spoilers, I won’t go into details about how emphatically a man in this story, with the complicity of doctors and the American culture, believes he owns his wife’s body.
Some of the themes and topics included in the other stories are
Social isolation of women
Motherhood
Oppression of women
Systemic cultural assumptions and practices that subjugate women
Society’s fixation on women’s bodies
The media’s normalization of violence against women
It is a disturbing yet fascinating read. Maria Machado deserves the acclamation she has received as a short story writer.
