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Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

2017; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 91; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2017.0149

1945-8134

Sean Guynes,

Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity

the town, leading to a conflict that seems likely to explode into mass violence at any moment. Grotesque details occasionally hint at a satiric purpose, but ultimately this is a tenser, sadder tale that underscores the horror and despair of post-Soviet life. Ganieva immerses us in a world where corruption and violence are so widespread and legal protections so meaningless that even love at first sight cannot guarantee a happy ending. Social pressures and empty traditions are all that seemingly remain of the fabric of society, and vestigial institutions from the Soviet period (cults of personality, political youth groups and meetings) have somehow macabrely become reanimated. In this unstable environment, Ganieva’s hero and heroine always seem at risk. Mundane choices—stepping away for a private conversation, agreeing to a date, any kind of nonconformity—can open the door for horrifying acts of violence that threaten to envelop not just the immediate target but also, as in the fable that a minor character tells Ganieva’s heroine at the beginning of the book, all of society. Politics and religion may represent the spark and excuse that sets off the conflagration, but the real issues are greed, corruption, and power—not faith. This is a timely novel for anyone who follows news from Russia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and other post-Soviet areas. It left me saddened and horrified because it offers a vivid portrait of a world where little place remains for private happiness and humane values. Strongly recommended. Emily D. Johnson University of Oklahoma Emily D. Johnson is an associate professor of Russian at the University of Oklahoma. She studies twentieth-century Russian literature and history and the legacy of the Stalinist labor camp system. Yale University Press published Gulag Letters, her translation of the correspondence of the Russo-Latvian poet Arsenii Formakov, in 2017. Fiction Carmen Maria Machado. Her Body and Other Parties: Stories. Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2017. 248 pages. Carmen Maria Machado’s debut shortstory collection, Her Body and Other Parties , reveals a new herald for the New Weird, marking Machado as one of the genre’s foremost voices alongside Caitlín R. Kiernan, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer . Machado is also, indisputably, an anti-Lovecraft. Whereas Lovecraft—the brightest of the genre’s elder dark stars— abhorred the body, sex, and sexuality, and manifested his disgust through horrifying , polymorphic figures like Cthulhu and the shoggoths, Machado’s tales rejoice in the body and its pleasures, embracing sex as weird, arousing, messy, yet altogether human. The horror stems not from the presence of the body itself but from the body’s contact with constructs like gender, sexuality, and propriety. With her debut Diksha Basu The Windfall Crown The Windfall follows a family that suddenly receives an exorbitant amount of wealth, catapulting them from a comfortable life into one of luxury in the wealthiest part of Delhi, a move that sends ripples out through every aspect of their lives. In this novel about belonging and ever-shifting social status, Diksha Basu’s words are filled with warmth and humor. Tamim Al-Barghouti In Jerusalem and Other Poems Trans. Radwa Ashour Interlink Books A Palestinian-Egyptian poet whose readings have drawn crowds by the thousands and filled the screens of Tahrir Square amid the aftershocks of revolution, Tamim Al-Barghouti draws on fable and Arabic literary tradition to plumb the depths of loss and yearning in the Arab world. These lyrical poems, translated into English for the first time, strike chords of lamentation and rebirth, painful in their simplicity and profound in their images and allegory. Nota Bene WORLDLIT.ORG 69 collection, she molds genre, form, tone, and subject like a master of the craft, wielding the most beautiful, haunting prose this year. Machado’s collection of eight stories— all but one, “The Resident,” previously published—has been anticipated since “The Husband Stitch” was nominated for the 2014 Nebula novelette award. In this rending tale of a woman’s lifelong encounter with the goodness of “good men,” the story-obsessed narrator reminds us before her death, “Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle.” Like this urban legend send-up, Machado’s horror fables bend generic...