In advance of our 15 November meeting to discuss Carmen Maria Machado’s collection of short stories, Her Body and Other Parties, you may like to take a look at ‘The Husband Stitch‘, Winner of the 2014 Nebula novelette award and published in Granta. A gothic fairy-tale in the tradition of Angela Carter, it draws on folklore and urban legends to create an unsettling tale of love and its boundaries.
‘In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. I am at a neighbour’s party with my parents, and I am seventeen. Though my father didn’t notice, I drank half a glass of white wine in the kitchen a few minutes ago, with the neighbour’s teenage daughter. Everything is soft, like a fresh oil painting.
‘The boy is not facing me. I see the muscles of his neck and upper back, how he fairly strains out of his button-down shirts. I run slick. It isn’t that I don’t have choices. I am beautiful. I have a pretty mouth. I have a breast that heaves out of my dresses in a way that seems innocent and perverse all at the same time. I am a good girl, from a good family. But he is a little craggy, in that way that men sometimes are, and I want.
‘I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanitarium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly that they take you away from the known world for wanting it?
‘The boy notices me. He seems sweet, flustered. He says, hello. He asks my name.’The boy notices me. He seems sweet, flustered. He says, hello. He asks my name.
‘I have always wanted to choose my moment, and this is the moment I choose.’I have always wanted to choose my moment, and this is the moment I choose.’
Read more on the Granta website: https://granta.com/the-husband-stitch/
We’ll be meeting via Zoom to discuss Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado on Tuesday 15 Nov, 7pm. The event is free and open to all. Book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cardiff-booktalk-her-body-and-other-parties-online-registration-443321716187
Cardiff BookTalk 