What to Expect From National Book Awards Finalist Her Body and Other Parties

Bookworms, rejoice! The shortlist for the 2017 National Book Awards was announced earlier today. Whittled down from 1,500 titles, a total of 20 nominees were chosen across the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature categories. Among the five fiction nominees is Carmen Maria Machado's debut story collection Her Body and Other Parties.

Female protagonists can be found at the center of every story in Machado's book. In one tale, a wife staves off her husband's requests to remove the ribbon from around her neck until she finally relents and loses her head. (Read it for yourself to find out how literal this statement is.) In another sketch, a woman's gastric bypass leads to both weight loss and unwelcome visits from an apparition. There's also a doomsday story about the end of humanity as told through one woman's sexual encounters.

The characters and events that unfold are individual, but the theme that unites them is universal: the war on women's bodies is real. This battle is best described as a tug of war between feminists who seek to repossess the female form and those who aim to subdue it, even mutilate it. But there's joy, too — the experience of womanhood is celebrated within Machado's pages, hence the reference to "Parties" in the title.

As if the title weren't enough to draw you in, Hunger author Roxane Gay had this to say about it:

Like all good fiction, Machado's book reminds us of the important role literature plays in society. It forces us to reflect and empathize with the characters we read about. In this sense, Her Body and Other Parties should be required reading.