This is my first exposure to Carmen Maria Machado’s work, and I am glad I didn’t have to endure another day without being familiar with it. Not that my preference is relevant, but I find her work quite enjoyable.
Captivating aspects of Machado’s work in both “The Husband Stitch” and “Inventory” are the tone and format of the writing. In “The Husband Stitch” the first lines being a directive to readers is a foreshadowing of the unique body of work that lies ahead. Throughout the story the directives continue, shifting in intensity. Layered between these directives are alternating first-person narratives and third-person stories of myth and lore. The first-person narratives that incorporate coming of age scenes (losing virginity, first boyfriend, marriage, childbirth) are intentionally coupled with mythic stories that usually involve some sort of tragedy to a woman. In the end of the story, the ultimate tragedy comes to a head as the narrator is taken out of narration itself and presumably dies. The voice of the narrator at the end is distinct from the first person accounts and entanglements of fantasy in the majority of the story prior.
The style in which Machado writes is darkly comedic and quite palatable despite the serious undertones and real, painful experiences that are highlighted. Magical realism provides sugary coatings for hard to swallow pills.
This palatable, dark humor is present in “Inventory” as well. What starts out as an entertaining recollection of sexual encounters morphs into a collection of distractions from the impending doom of the surrounding world. The experiences in “Inventory” are experiences everyone can relate to, in the sense that humans are frequently searching for an ‘out’, a distraction. Sex, historically for many, is a prime and primal way to escape reality. A moment of connection in a progressively disconnected world, and in the case of “Inventory” a progressively dying humanity. This story particularly seems all too relevant, an epidemic read during a pandemic. What has been your ‘out’? What have you been keeping inventory of through the past years of change, more years of growing up, and constant chaos that is the world we know?