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Book Club: Her Body And Other Parties · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie.
0:07
Speaker 2: And Samantha.
0:07
Speaker 1: And welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production
0:09
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. And today we have a first here on
0:21
Speaker 1: Book Club. I think, Samantha, correct me if I'm wrong,
0:25
Speaker 1: but I believe this is the first time we're featuring
0:27
Speaker 1: a book by an author we've already covered before. Yeah.
0:33
Speaker 1: I think so.
0:34
Speaker 2: You are correct. Because we try to spread it out.
0:37
Speaker 2: So this is the first time we were like, oh,
0:39
Speaker 2: we want to come back.
0:40
Speaker 1: Yes, because we both loved the graphic novel, The Lola Woods.
0:45
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite things we've read for this segment.
0:48
Speaker 1: And we kept coming across the author's other works. And
0:54
Speaker 1: it was just so tempting and eventually... I said, I
0:58
Speaker 1: really want to read this. So today we are focusing
1:02
Speaker 1: on Carmen Maria Machado's debut novel, Her Body and Other Parties,
1:06
Speaker 1: which is a collection of eight horror short stories that
1:09
Speaker 1: cover a wide range of fears and anxieties facing women.
1:15
Speaker 1: So the eight stories are The Husband Stitch, Inventory, Mothers,
1:20
Speaker 1: Especially Heinous, Real Women Have Bodies, Eight Bites, The Resident,
1:25
Speaker 1: and Difficult at Parties. After it was published in 2017,
1:30
Speaker 1: it was nominated for numerous awards and won the Shirley
1:33
Speaker 1: Jackson Award. It's genre-bending and strange and visceral and haunting
1:39
Speaker 1: and very queer, I have to say. It captures a
1:43
Speaker 1: lot of girlhood and young womanhood with threads of urban legends,
1:48
Speaker 1: ghost stories, Girl Scout camp stories, the type of stories
1:52
Speaker 1: that stick with you and that are often shared or
1:55
Speaker 1: passed on. A lot of them are ambiguous or feature
2:01
Speaker 1: an unreliable narrator. It's a political conversation and at times
2:06
Speaker 1: condemnation of how we as a society treat women and
2:10
Speaker 1: women's bodies. I have to say I had the most
2:13
Speaker 1: embarrassing revelation after I finished it and I was just
2:16
Speaker 1: thinking about it because it was a book I really
2:18
Speaker 1: like sat with afterwards. I was like, oh, let me
2:21
Speaker 1: let me go through my thoughts here. And I was like, wow,
2:22
Speaker 1: that's a lot of stuff about women's bodies. And I
2:24
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, the title. Yes. Yes. Yes. So before
2:35
Speaker 1: we get into this, spoilers and content warning, this book
2:39
Speaker 1: is pretty graphic when it comes to sex, eroticism, and
2:43
Speaker 1: body harm. Not necessarily in a bad way. There's like
2:48
Speaker 1: good and bad of that, but but it exists. Some
2:52
Speaker 1: of the themes are pretty heavy. We're going to be
2:55
Speaker 1: touching on these topics that we aren't going to go
2:58
Speaker 1: to in depth. One of the things I love about
3:02
Speaker 1: this book is that it has a lot of really
3:05
Speaker 1: creative styles of writing. And Samantha and I were talking
3:07
Speaker 1: about this beforehand. Just every story felt very unique and
3:12
Speaker 1: very different in a way that I very much enjoyed.
3:17
Speaker 1: So the first one, for instance, has this thing where
3:22
Speaker 1: it says, if you're reading this story aloud, and then
3:25
Speaker 1: it will have like instructions. So if you are reading
3:28
Speaker 1: this story out loud, force a listener to reveal a
3:31
Speaker 1: devastating secret, then open the nearest window to the street
3:34
Speaker 1: and scream it as loudly as you are able. And
3:38
Speaker 1: just to kind of capture those emotions, those really powerful
3:42
Speaker 1: emotions that she's trying to convey. And interestingly, Samantha was
3:51
Speaker 1: further ahead in reading the book than I was, or listening,
3:56
Speaker 1: as the case may be. You were telling me about
4:00
Speaker 1: this one based on Law & Order SVU.
4:03
Speaker 2: Right.
4:04
Speaker 1: And I was very confused. I was like, wait, so
4:07
Speaker 1: if I haven't seen Law & Order SVU, what's going
4:10
Speaker 1: to happen to me? And you're like, no, no, no,
4:11
Speaker 1: you're going to be fine. And I was. So Especially Heinous,
4:19
Speaker 1: which is the longest short story in there, is essentially
4:23
Speaker 1: an even more messed up episode of Law & Order SVU.
4:29
Speaker 1: So it's like actually Benson and Stabler are the characters,
4:34
Speaker 1: and it's broken down by short episode descriptions. Machado used
4:39
Speaker 1: the real episode titles to make this whole thing. There
4:44
Speaker 1: are also doppelgangers, Henson and Abler, who seem better and happier.
4:50
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, it took me a minute to
4:53
Speaker 2: realize Henson and Abler. I was like, oh. Oh, okay. Like,
4:58
Speaker 2: I literally was like, why are they going back and
5:00
Speaker 2: forth from these characters? I'm confused. Okay, I get it.
5:04
Speaker 2: I get it now.
5:05
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. And there's a lot going on in this
5:10
Speaker 1: short story. There's alien objections. There's ghosts. Here's an example. Quote, redemption.
5:19
Speaker 1: Benson accidentally catches a rapist when she Google stalks her
5:23
Speaker 1: newest OKCupid date. She can't decide whether or not to
5:26
Speaker 1: mark this in success, call it rapist, or failure, date
5:30
Speaker 1: didn't work out column. She marks it in both. So
5:34
Speaker 1: it's just little entries like that for every episode title. Yeah.
5:41
Speaker 1: There's another one that stood out to me is inventory.
5:45
Speaker 1: wherein it's told through somebody's almost journal entries about their
5:51
Speaker 1: sex partners. And in the background, you realize the apocalypse
5:55
Speaker 1: is happening and it's getting worse and worse. But it's
5:58
Speaker 1: not the focus. The sex partners are the focus.
6:00
Speaker 2: Right, right.
6:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. So because these are short stories, we're not going
6:07
Speaker 1: to do our usual plot summary, but we are going
6:10
Speaker 1: to be discussing plot details and the themes. Okay. I personally,
6:14
Speaker 1: if this is your thing, if you like short stories,
6:17
Speaker 1: body horror, I really recommend this book. But yes, let
6:24
Speaker 1: us get started. One of the first themes I would
6:29
Speaker 1: say is life and death, which makes sense because it
6:33
Speaker 1: is a collection of horror short stories. There's just a
6:39
Speaker 1: lot of, because it's body horror stories, There's a lot
6:43
Speaker 1: of writing about the ways your body can fail you,
6:51
Speaker 1: like a lot of illness or injury, a lot of
6:55
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And then just like imminent death is
7:01
Speaker 1: in several of them. Or even ghosts outside of the
7:06
Speaker 1: SVU one. There's another ghost story in there. Here's a
7:13
Speaker 1: quote I wanted to include. Scoffing is the first mistake
7:16
Speaker 1: a woman can make. Life is too short to be
7:19
Speaker 1: afraid of nothing, she said, and I will show you.
7:22
Speaker 1: Pride is the second mistake. Afterward, everyone believed that she
7:26
Speaker 1: had wished to die, even though she had died proving
7:28
Speaker 1: that she wanted to live. As it turns out, being
7:31
Speaker 1: right was the third and worst mistake. So I really
7:37
Speaker 1: like that. Because the... I love this idea that she
7:45
Speaker 1: was trying to prove she didn't want to die and
7:46
Speaker 1: in doing so died. And there's just so many great
7:52
Speaker 1: quotes in this book that it was hard to isolate,
7:55
Speaker 1: but that one stood out to me. Another big theme, obviously,
8:02
Speaker 1: is bodies. And women's bodies in particular. And sex. There
8:08
Speaker 1: is a lot of sex and sensuality and desire in
8:11
Speaker 1: this book. As I said, the joys and horrors of it,
8:15
Speaker 1: it's not always good, it's not always bad. Another thing
8:19
Speaker 1: is not respecting women's boundaries. Here's a quote from The
8:23
Speaker 1: Husband Stitch. A wife, he says, should have no secrets
8:28
Speaker 1: from her husband. I don't have any secrets, I tell him.
8:31
Speaker 1: The ribbon. The ribbon is not a secret. It's just mine.
8:37
Speaker 1: So in this story... It's a take on a popular
8:41
Speaker 1: urban legend about the woman with the ribbon around her neck.
8:44
Speaker 1: She takes it off and then her head comes off.
8:47
Speaker 1: Which I feel like we've read another version of this
8:49
Speaker 1: story in another series of short stories. Right.
8:54
Speaker 2: I know it exists in the stories you tell in
8:57
Speaker 2: the dark or the stories you tell in the dark.
9:00
Speaker 2: So this is a legend that she really just put
9:02
Speaker 2: into it. Because I was like, wait, wait, wait. This
9:05
Speaker 2: is familiar. Yes. And I did not think this is
9:09
Speaker 2: where it was going to go. Because I was like,
9:11
Speaker 2: that is obviously an urban legend story. And she took
9:16
Speaker 2: it into this realm. But she really opened it up
9:18
Speaker 2: because I was like, man, there's this level of like
9:21
Speaker 2: this dude who had everything and happiness and love. And
9:25
Speaker 2: it was wonderful. But he had to do this thing
9:28
Speaker 2: because it was one thing he could not have. Which
9:30
Speaker 2: talks about men in general, about like the challenge and
9:34
Speaker 2: this conversation in it as well. Willing to change. not
9:38
Speaker 2: hear her trust her when she says don't do this
9:43
Speaker 2: this is the only like i've never requested anything from
9:46
Speaker 2: you but this one thing and he still needed to
9:49
Speaker 2: own that of her and it was like.
9:52
Speaker 1: Wow yeah yeah and he passed that on to his
9:59
Speaker 1: son which we will talk about later, but in her
10:05
Speaker 1: version of this story, which I'm pretty sure it was
10:07
Speaker 1: called Revenge. It was a Japanese set of horror stories
10:12
Speaker 1: we did. I think it had a similar... Oh, that one?
10:15
Speaker 2: Okay.
10:16
Speaker 1: It had something similar in this vein. In this Women
10:22
Speaker 1: are born with a ribbon somewhere around their body. And
10:27
Speaker 1: it's just part of them. But he didn't view it
10:31
Speaker 1: as that. He viewed it as something that he should
10:34
Speaker 1: own or be able to have. And he would like,
10:36
Speaker 1: even though she had made explicit her boundaries about it,
10:39
Speaker 1: he would kind of like pull at it and ask
10:43
Speaker 1: her about it. All of this stuff. So this goes into...
10:50
Speaker 1: Another thing that I saw throughout this book, men's desire
10:53
Speaker 1: being prioritized. So after giving birth in the husband's stitch,
10:58
Speaker 1: the woman in question undergoes a painful procedure to tighten
11:01
Speaker 1: her vagina so that intercourse with her husband will be
11:04
Speaker 1: more pleasurable for him. And that's what the title refers to.
11:07
Speaker 1: The husband's stitch is an actual thing. And she just
11:13
Speaker 1: went along with it because she thought she had to.
11:15
Speaker 2: Well, in the story, it seemed interesting because she was like, wait, what?
11:20
Speaker 2: That was not a thing I'm thinking about. I'm thinking
11:21
Speaker 2: about everything else. I'm thinking about the fact that it
11:24
Speaker 2: was so painful that this is going to be a problem,
11:27
Speaker 2: that knowing that I'm probably not going to be able
11:29
Speaker 2: to have another child because of all the problems. But
11:31
Speaker 2: that's what you're worried about. And when she was about
11:33
Speaker 2: to ask a question that had nothing to do with that,
11:36
Speaker 2: the doctor's first response was like, oh, no, no, we
11:37
Speaker 2: took care of it. You're going to be as tight as...
11:40
Speaker 2: She's like, what the... Okay. And never asked the question
11:43
Speaker 2: that she really had pertaining to her own body.
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Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. Because they're like viewing it as property of men.
11:50
Speaker 1: They're not viewing it as her own. Right.
11:52
Speaker 2: And he never asked her. He just looked at her
11:54
Speaker 2: husband and was like, yeah, I got you, man.
11:55
Speaker 1: Yeah.
11:56
Speaker 2: I know what you want to eat.
11:57
Speaker 1: So gross. So gross. There are also themes of sexual
12:12
Speaker 1: assault throughout. So the SVU story, for instance, is a
12:20
Speaker 1: way to ask, like, why do we watch a show
12:22
Speaker 1: about women and girls being raped and murdered? And the
12:25
Speaker 1: answer is the scary truth, and that's because women and
12:28
Speaker 1: girls are raped and murdered. And then there's another story
12:34
Speaker 1: at the end, Bad at Parties, that is about a
12:41
Speaker 1: sexual trauma woman who has experienced sexual trauma and is
12:44
Speaker 1: trying to get over it and be intimate, sexually intimate
12:48
Speaker 1: with her partner again. And to do that, she's, she
12:52
Speaker 1: rents these porn tapes and then she goes online. But
12:59
Speaker 1: she can hear the voice, the like inner voices of
13:04
Speaker 1: the porn actors. And it just completely takes her out
13:09
Speaker 1: of it. Obviously, because they're thinking about things like, I
13:14
Speaker 1: got to go do X, Y, Z. My husband won't
13:17
Speaker 1: like that. Like, you know, all these things. And that
13:21
Speaker 1: one was upsetting because the partner wasn't like necessarily pushing her,
13:24
Speaker 1: but she was really pushing herself. Right. To get over it.
13:30
Speaker 2: It sounded like the worth of their relationship was based
13:33
Speaker 2: on whether or not she can have sex like they
13:35
Speaker 2: used to.
13:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.
13:38
Speaker 2: And then her thinking that her being strong is to
13:41
Speaker 2: get past it, stay in the same apartment. where everything happened.
13:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
13:46
Speaker 2: But then, like, being obsessed into these videos because she
13:49
Speaker 2: can see and hear things beyond. And it's interesting in
13:55
Speaker 2: the way she relays it because she realizes it kind
13:58
Speaker 2: of takes the way of these sexual things that's supposed
14:01
Speaker 2: to entertain mostly men, that she sees the humanity behind
14:06
Speaker 2: it because she's seen, like, how it can be used
14:10
Speaker 2: against women oftentimes. And so that connection is like, separated
14:15
Speaker 2: into being an act of like not a submission but
14:20
Speaker 2: entertainment and that it's not nothing is real like that
14:23
Speaker 2: sex has become like being an expression not an actual
14:27
Speaker 2: expression of love it's just not real type of thing.
14:32
Speaker 1: Yeah well and that's what she was experiencing at a
14:37
Speaker 1: very awkward dinner party which she was having these interactions
14:42
Speaker 1: that she just felt were so false and so fake
14:45
Speaker 1: and nobody was being honest with each other. And, um,
14:50
Speaker 1: because of what she'd just recently been through, she couldn't,
14:57
Speaker 1: she couldn't deal with that. Yeah. Yeah.
14:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think also it sounded like she didn't
15:02
Speaker 2: like parties to begin with.
15:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
15:05
Speaker 2: I think she felt she was awkward to begin with,
15:07
Speaker 2: but then escalated by all of this. But at the
15:11
Speaker 2: same time, also being confronted with a video camera.
15:14
Speaker 1: Yeah.
15:15
Speaker 2: Like that connection was an interesting moment for her to
15:18
Speaker 2: be like, no, this is happening to me too. And
15:21
Speaker 2: then also needing to use that videotape herself to videotape
15:27
Speaker 2: herself because she was doing so many things during the
15:30
Speaker 2: night that her boyfriend was like, yeah, you were trying
15:32
Speaker 2: to kill me a couple of times because you're being restless.
15:35
Speaker 2: She's not realizing this. So she needed that proof herself.
15:37
Speaker 2: But also it felt like when she was videotaping them
15:41
Speaker 2: that she could hear each other's thoughts too.
15:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I thought that was really interesting because
15:49
Speaker 1: it felt like she was trying to reestablish a connection
15:53
Speaker 1: to her body after her trauma. And she had this
15:58
Speaker 1: camera like recording herself and watching it later and trying
16:05
Speaker 1: to make sense of how she was acting versus how
16:11
Speaker 1: she was feeling um yeah it was very interesting very
16:17
Speaker 1: interesting one another theme as we often talk about in
16:23
Speaker 1: our horror episodes motherhood so we already mentioned in husband
16:29
Speaker 1: stitch there was um a thread of her she gives
16:34
Speaker 1: birth to a son And she wants to raise him
16:38
Speaker 1: to be a better man. And her son, at first,
16:45
Speaker 1: that looked like that was going to be the case.
16:47
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk a bit more about why
16:50
Speaker 1: at the end. But then her husband pointed out, he
16:58
Speaker 1: othered her for the ribbon, basically. He was like, this
17:01
Speaker 1: ribbon is strange. Whereas previously their son had accepted, oh,
17:07
Speaker 1: this is just a part of her. Now he viewed
17:10
Speaker 1: it as, oh, this is a strange thing. And he
17:13
Speaker 1: started pulling at it too. But she also has this
17:18
Speaker 1: thought of like, she'd rather raise a son than a
17:24
Speaker 1: daughter because she was afraid of raising a daughter in
17:27
Speaker 1: the society that they were in. Yeah.
17:31
Speaker 2: She said it's a void, so no ribbon.
17:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
17:35
Speaker 2: Indicating that what she was going through, that daughter would
17:38
Speaker 2: have gone through as well. Yeah.
17:40
Speaker 1: Yes. There's also another story where one of the characters says,
17:50
Speaker 1: essentially he's like, thank God we can't make a baby
17:53
Speaker 1: because it's a queer couple. And then they do have
17:56
Speaker 1: a baby. Yes.
17:58
Speaker 2: I was like, what? What's happening? What is happening? Yes.
18:03
Speaker 1: As I said, there are a lot of queer themes.
18:06
Speaker 1: That story in particular has a lot of unreliable narrator
18:11
Speaker 1: and you're not quite sure what's going on. And then
18:18
Speaker 1: in the story, The Resident, which I believe is the
18:24
Speaker 1: only one she wrote specifically for this book. Like every
18:27
Speaker 1: other one had been written and published in other publications,
18:30
Speaker 1: but The Resident, was new to this book. There is
18:34
Speaker 1: a prank with the main character when she was a
18:38
Speaker 1: kid in the brownies. And I found that whole thing interesting.
18:42
Speaker 1: I was like, is this true about the brownies? But
18:47
Speaker 1: where she basically was pranked because of her queerness. She
18:52
Speaker 1: kissed a girl and she was really excited about it.
18:56
Speaker 1: But then they kind of took her into the woods
19:00
Speaker 1: and she had a pretty terrible experience. Um, I got
19:03
Speaker 1: really sick. So there's things like that. There's other, um,
19:12
Speaker 1: there's plenty of queer storylines throughout. I would say body image,
19:20
Speaker 1: big one in this. Um, one of them was weight
19:24
Speaker 1: and surgery with the story eight bites. It was strange
19:29
Speaker 1: to read that now. Because we got all the like
19:32
Speaker 1: GLP-1s and stuff like that. Because it was sort of,
19:35
Speaker 1: it was framed as a very experimental surgery that everybody
19:40
Speaker 1: was getting. So you got to hop on board or else.
19:46
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the short story we did a
19:49
Speaker 1: long time. ago on this book i read this like
19:54
Speaker 1: short story i read in high school called like what
19:57
Speaker 1: you lose but it was in the smoothies they were
20:00
Speaker 1: these like smoothies that were the best thing you ever
20:02
Speaker 1: had and then people would gain weight because they loved
20:05
Speaker 1: the smoothies but all these like weight loss machines popped
20:08
Speaker 1: up next to them And then guess what happens when
20:12
Speaker 1: you use them 10 times? Aliens come for you. But
20:20
Speaker 1: this was interesting in terms of there was sort of
20:23
Speaker 1: a element of being haunted by the pieces of you,
20:28
Speaker 1: the parts of you that you got rid of. And
20:33
Speaker 1: then there was a lot of pressure and judgment about
20:36
Speaker 1: weight loss procedures, whether it was to get one or
20:38
Speaker 1: to not get one. So the mother and daughter in
20:42
Speaker 1: this story, the mother gets it. The daughter is very
20:50
Speaker 1: unhappy with this decision and asks her mom if her
20:54
Speaker 1: mom thinks something is wrong with her body based on
20:57
Speaker 1: the way she speaks about her own because they kind
20:59
Speaker 1: of looked alike. And so I think that that touches
21:03
Speaker 1: on a tension that a lot of us have had
21:06
Speaker 1: where maybe you know you have these unhealthy thoughts body
21:10
Speaker 1: image or body ideals, but you still want them, but
21:14
Speaker 1: you don't want, like, other people to feel the same way,
21:17
Speaker 1: but the other people are seeing what you're doing. Right, right.
21:21
Speaker 2: It was also interesting because, A, it sounded like she
21:25
Speaker 2: had to trade her life. Essentially, there was a marker. Like,
21:28
Speaker 2: if you do this, you're going to die at this point.
21:30
Speaker 2: And it was, it shortened their lifespan. And she was
21:33
Speaker 2: willing to sacrifice that to be skinny once again. Also
21:38
Speaker 2: interesting because, When she's having a conversation with her daughter,
21:43
Speaker 2: I can't tell if she's actually having a conversation with
21:46
Speaker 2: her daughter or if it's in her mind. Yeah. Like,
21:50
Speaker 2: that is one of the ghosts. Because when she talks
21:51
Speaker 2: to her sisters who had all gone through it, it
21:53
Speaker 2: sounded like a rite of passage for the entire family.
21:57
Speaker 2: And it sounded like each one of them had been
22:01
Speaker 2: confronted by happy ghosts.
22:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:05
Speaker 2: They're like, this is my future self. Thank you for
22:07
Speaker 2: doing this or whatever, whatnot. She was the only one
22:10
Speaker 2: amongst them. that had the haunting ghost, which she tried
22:13
Speaker 2: to kill. I think she does kill. She doesn't know
22:15
Speaker 2: what it is, but she killed it. But something else
22:17
Speaker 2: comes back instead, or a different part comes back instead.
22:21
Speaker 2: So it's interesting. I was like, I don't know if
22:23
Speaker 2: this is real.
22:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. No.
22:27
Speaker 2: Or she's fighting the demons here.
22:30
Speaker 1: No, I think you're absolutely right. And that goes back
22:33
Speaker 1: to the whole unreliable narrator, ambiguous ending. Is this real?
22:41
Speaker 1: A lot of the stories make you at the end
22:43
Speaker 1: be like, how did that really happen?
22:47
Speaker 2: Well, especially with the one with the queer couple having
22:50
Speaker 2: the baby and the baby just dropped off. Because then
22:53
Speaker 2: she sees the families with her child and it turns
22:55
Speaker 2: out to be like, maybe she just dreamed up this
22:58
Speaker 2: by seeing a picture of this child and broke into
23:01
Speaker 2: someone's home.
23:03
Speaker 1: Yes, that one is definitely... I think maybe number one.
23:07
Speaker 1: It's in the top three of the most unreliable narrators.
23:10
Speaker 1: I don't really know what....
23:12
Speaker 2: I will say, in the caveat of all this, the
23:14
Speaker 2: entirety of the book, I was like, Annie, I think
23:16
Speaker 2: you're going to have to translate some of these for
23:17
Speaker 2: me because it may have went over my head. I'm
23:20
Speaker 2: not sure exactly what was happening on this level. So
23:25
Speaker 2: you might have to tell me what is going down
23:30
Speaker 2: at this point. Because also in the SVU.
23:34
Speaker 2: They had interns that were demons. And I was like,
23:39
Speaker 2: I don't know why the disappearing interns is a part
23:41
Speaker 2: of this story.
23:44
Speaker 1: I have to say, when I think of her writing
23:47
Speaker 1: that one, I bet she was just having a delightful time.
23:50
Speaker 2: Yes. I absolutely was like, I believe this may be
23:54
Speaker 2: a fanfic of SVU in such a way that is
24:01
Speaker 2: one of the most creative fanfics I've ever heard in
24:06
Speaker 2: my life.
24:07
Speaker 1: It's so creative.
24:08
Speaker 2: It's so unique.
24:11
Speaker 1: It's so unique. And she originally was going to... I
24:17
Speaker 1: think she was going to incorporate the original descriptions of
24:22
Speaker 1: the episodes. But it was too long. So that's why
24:26
Speaker 1: she went with the titles. And she said, basically, she
24:28
Speaker 1: just looked at the title and tried to make a surreal...
24:31
Speaker 1: version of what that title made her think of accomplished
24:35
Speaker 1: accomplished and it does build and it's it's so strange
24:39
Speaker 1: oh also it has a like really fun detail where
24:43
Speaker 1: uh stadler can hear the like yes he thinks it's
24:47
Speaker 1: like a like headache thing or he's hallucinating.
24:50
Speaker 2: The dun dun that comes in my like and it's
24:53
Speaker 2: definitely the things that you've taught me about fanfic that
24:58
Speaker 2: moment of like shipping And I know exactly what DA
25:02
Speaker 2: she's talking about. I know exactly what, you know, like,
25:04
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, she wanted them to get, she needed
25:07
Speaker 2: them to kiss. I get it. I get it. Yeah.
25:13
Speaker 1: It's a grand old time.
25:16
Speaker 2: It was. But back to, sorry, I will say about
25:19
Speaker 2: the fading story. One of the, like, one of the
25:22
Speaker 2: parts of all the things, like, why would you think this?
25:25
Speaker 2: I'm like, now I need to go get oysters. Yeah.
25:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
25:34
Speaker 2: Because that's one of the things that she kind of
25:36
Speaker 2: enjoys before she goes into that. And I'm like, yeah,
25:38
Speaker 2: I need that.
25:40
Speaker 1: Yes. So I think the fading story is really interesting.
25:44
Speaker 1: So in this story, women are essentially fading away. Not
25:50
Speaker 1: all women.
25:52
Speaker 2: Oh, that was, that was a unique, that was horrifying.
25:55
Speaker 2: That was, if that, I think there's so many that's like,
25:58
Speaker 2: oh no, like, oh no, impending doom. But this was like,
26:02
Speaker 2: Legitimately like, oh.
26:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:05
Speaker 2: This is a horror, this is ghost or horror story. Yeah.
26:09
Speaker 1: And there's nothing you can do once you start fading
26:14
Speaker 1: that they know of. And it was really sad, honestly.
26:19
Speaker 2: No, it was super sad.
26:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And it made me think of just so
26:27
Speaker 1: many stories, but also just kind of the reality a
26:33
Speaker 1: lot of times, unfortunately, is, you know, women having to
26:36
Speaker 1: make themselves small or disappear or whatever it is to
26:42
Speaker 1: make other people comfortable. Because, yeah, once you start fading,
26:50
Speaker 1: you're just going to disappear. And that's the end of you.
26:56
Speaker 2: And the sadness is that no one is talking about it?
27:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:03
Speaker 2: And then also the dialogue between the two dudes just still,
27:09
Speaker 2: still seeing them as only sexual beings and whether or
27:13
Speaker 2: not they can have sex with them.
27:15
Speaker 1: Yep. That was pretty disgusting. Yeah. That was pretty gross.
27:22
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, we have this portrait of a queer couple
27:26
Speaker 1: and one of them is disappearing and just.
27:32
Speaker 1: Kind of the heartbreak of that and not being able
27:34
Speaker 1: to stop it. While these dudes are talking about, I
27:38
Speaker 1: wonder if I can still have sex with these fading ladies.
27:41
Speaker 2: I don't know. Being picky about it.
27:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:46
Speaker 2: That was like, I know that's such a weird, I'm like, bro,
27:49
Speaker 2: but also understanding that the pain and the hatred within
27:53
Speaker 2: the other worker.
27:55
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that brings us to
28:10
Speaker 1: our final theme. It's a big one about stories and art.
28:16
Speaker 1: So obviously, I would say this is an homage to
28:22
Speaker 1: a bunch of different types of horror genres, to urban legends,
28:29
Speaker 1: to creepy folk tales, things like that. And a lot
28:33
Speaker 1: of those classic stories that we've heard do involve women. Like,
28:40
Speaker 1: you know, either as the ghosts, somebody who's saying something's
28:45
Speaker 1: wrong here. And just the way she uses those archetypes,
28:52
Speaker 1: but kind of shifts them. So I do like, here's
28:56
Speaker 1: a quote, sort of exemplifying part of what I mean.
29:00
Speaker 1: Brides never fare well in stories. Stories can sense happiness
29:05
Speaker 1: and snuff it out like a candle. So going back
29:09
Speaker 1: to what I was saying with the husband's ditch about
29:12
Speaker 1: how she tried to raise her son to be better,
29:16
Speaker 1: part of what she does is she tells him these stories,
29:21
Speaker 1: these urban urban tale urban legends these folk tales through
29:27
Speaker 1: the woman's perspective which is not usually what we get
29:31
Speaker 1: uh so here's another quote so then i tell him
29:36
Speaker 1: stories closer to true children who go missing along a
29:39
Speaker 1: particular stretch of railroad track, lured by the sound of
29:42
Speaker 1: a phantom train to parts unknown, a black dog that
29:45
Speaker 1: appears at a person's doorstep three days before her passing
29:49
Speaker 1: a trio of frogs that corner you in the marshlands
29:52
Speaker 1: and tell your fortune for a price. My husband, I
29:55
Speaker 1: think would forbid these stories, but my son, listens to
29:58
Speaker 1: them with solemnity and keeps them to himself. So she's
30:02
Speaker 1: trying to pass on these stories but give them a
30:08
Speaker 1: more woman's perspective or like a less told specifically from
30:14
Speaker 1: like the male viewpoint woman victimhood perspective. But then her
30:21
Speaker 1: husband steps in and ruins it, I'll say. But One
30:27
Speaker 1: of the things that I immediately picked up on and
30:31
Speaker 1: that I loved is that there are references to scary
30:36
Speaker 1: stories to tell in the dark, which is something that
30:39
Speaker 1: I read as a kid and I loved. I used to, like,
30:41
Speaker 1: every Halloween, I would light a candle and me and
30:44
Speaker 1: my friend would read these stories aloud to each other.
30:47
Speaker 1: Loved them. And I feel like you and I recently
30:49
Speaker 1: were talking about the specific one she mentioned, which I
30:53
Speaker 1: have to say, like, she might not specifically be She
30:57
Speaker 1: might not be referencing Scary Stories to Tell in the
30:59
Speaker 1: Dark necessarily, but it is in Scary Stories to Tell
31:02
Speaker 1: in the Dark. I would say probably, but it's not specified.
31:09
Speaker 1: But there is a story in there where in the
31:12
Speaker 1: beginning of the book, it tells you that none of
31:15
Speaker 1: these stories are true except for one. And you're supposed
31:18
Speaker 1: to kind of guess which one you think it is.
31:21
Speaker 1: And it is the one where a mother and daughter...
31:25
Speaker 1: are in Paris, the mother gets really sick, and the
31:32
Speaker 1: front desk basically sends the daughter on a wild goose
31:36
Speaker 1: chase to get the medicine that she needs, and it
31:38
Speaker 1: takes forever. And it just feels like everybody's stalling her
31:43
Speaker 1: at every point, everything's going wrong. She comes back to
31:46
Speaker 1: the hotel, and they say they have no record of
31:49
Speaker 1: her or her mother being there. When the daughter asks
31:52
Speaker 1: to see the room, They've changed the wallpapers different. There's
31:57
Speaker 1: no sign that anyone had been in there. It turns
32:01
Speaker 1: out the mother had contracted something that was really, really
32:06
Speaker 1: contagious and that they were worried. The hotel staff, I guess,
32:12
Speaker 1: were worried that if word got out that it would
32:15
Speaker 1: really impact the people coming to their hotel and tourism dollars.
32:21
Speaker 1: But she tells this story in The Husband Stitch. which
32:25
Speaker 1: obviously is gaslighting, huge gaslighting. And I think she tells,
32:33
Speaker 1: she tells this like hook hand story and she tells
32:35
Speaker 1: it from the woman's point of view. And that one
32:37
Speaker 1: was very like, why didn't you believe her gaslighting? She
32:43
Speaker 1: also tells the story of the woman whose husband really
32:47
Speaker 1: wanted liver and she didn't have any liver.
32:50
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. Yeah.
32:52
Speaker 1: And he, she like, had to go get it from
32:55
Speaker 1: the graveyard.
32:57
Speaker 2: And, you know. And then, yeah.
32:59
Speaker 1: And then the ghost is like, who has my liver?
33:02
Speaker 1: And it's the husband, the husband who ate it.
33:04
Speaker 2: And she's like, oh, it's him, not me. That was
33:07
Speaker 2: my favorite part of the story.
33:10
Speaker 1: She's just like, whoops.
33:12
Speaker 2: Wasn't me.
33:12
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. But I love that she included those.
33:18
Speaker 1: Because they do have, I mean, I read those when
33:20
Speaker 1: I was a kid and they had such staying power
33:22
Speaker 1: and you would like, lay awake at night thinking about
33:26
Speaker 1: these things and they would stick with you and that
33:29
Speaker 1: brings us to i would say most of these thoughts
33:34
Speaker 1: are from the resident which as i said is the
33:36
Speaker 1: one she wrote specifically for this book and it's about
33:40
Speaker 1: the price of art um a lot of conversations around
33:45
Speaker 1: arts around ego around tropes uh here's a quote what's
33:51
Speaker 1: worse writing a trope or being one And so the
33:55
Speaker 1: trope in question is the madwoman. The madwoman in the attic.
34:01
Speaker 1: And the simplified plot of this story is that there's
34:07
Speaker 1: like an artist commune. It's like a place where all
34:13
Speaker 1: the artists go together and work on their projects. It's
34:18
Speaker 1: very near a lake. Very hippy-dippy, it sounds like. very
34:25
Speaker 1: strange um and the person we're following is confronting memories
34:33
Speaker 1: of her time there as a child when they she
34:37
Speaker 1: was with the brownies um so this one has a
34:42
Speaker 1: lot of strange like time changes very unreliable narrator which
34:50
Speaker 1: brings us to a quote It is my right to
34:54
Speaker 1: reside in my own mind. It is my right, I said.
34:57
Speaker 1: It is my right to be unsociable, and it is
35:00
Speaker 1: my right to be unpleasant to be around. Do you
35:03
Speaker 1: ever listen to yourself? This is crazy. That is crazy.
35:07
Speaker 1: Everything is crazy to you. By whose measure? Well, it
35:11
Speaker 1: is my right to be crazy, as you love to
35:14
Speaker 1: say so much. I have no shame. I have felt
35:17
Speaker 1: many things in my life, but shame is not among them.
35:21
Speaker 1: The volume of my voice caused me to stand on
35:22
Speaker 1: my tiptoes. I could not remember yelling like this ever.
35:27
Speaker 1: You may think that I have an obligation to you,
35:29
Speaker 1: but I assure you that us being thrown together in
35:32
Speaker 1: this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never
35:36
Speaker 1: had less of an obligation to anyone in my life,
35:39
Speaker 1: you aggressively ordinary woman. Yeah, so this was after... Another artist,
35:49
Speaker 1: whom she did not like, already didn't like her, had
35:54
Speaker 1: accused her of this trope thing. Like, you're just being
35:59
Speaker 1: the crazy woman in the attic. You're doing the trope.
36:04
Speaker 1: But then had flat out called her crazy. And after this,
36:09
Speaker 1: after this whole thing, she goes into the... Because everybody
36:14
Speaker 1: gets cabins, sort of. And she goes into the attic
36:17
Speaker 1: of her cabin and writes mad woman, mad woman in
36:20
Speaker 1: the attic, which I do love.
36:27
Speaker 2: Also, again, the story also, I was like, because I
36:31
Speaker 2: feel like the endings on all of these stories, she
36:36
Speaker 2: makes sure to make you think what really happened. You
36:40
Speaker 2: realize you've only seen one perspective and as bad as
36:43
Speaker 2: you want to feel for the, uh, what you would
36:46
Speaker 2: assume is the protagonist could may not be the good
36:48
Speaker 2: person because you have the wife who's like shocked and
36:53
Speaker 2: a little worried that she's there.
36:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. The ending for that one is certainly strange. It's very, uh,
37:03
Speaker 1: because it also, the whole time she's thinking about her wife,
37:08
Speaker 1: but she's not getting letters from her wife. Like that
37:11
Speaker 1: was a big thing. She kept checking for letters from
37:14
Speaker 1: her wife. So I thought the big twist was going
37:17
Speaker 1: to be like her wife was dead or she was dead. Honestly,
37:23
Speaker 1: at one point I was like.
37:24
Speaker 2: That was, I was like that. I thought that they
37:26
Speaker 2: were like, did she die when she first got there?
37:28
Speaker 2: And she was.
37:29
Speaker 1: She was really sick.
37:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, no, she was like all over the road.
37:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
37:35
Speaker 2: So that was my thought.
37:38
Speaker 1: I mean, again, I'm not sure. And then this one
37:40
Speaker 1: does like I had to reread. the part where she's
37:44
Speaker 1: remembering her trauma as a kid. Uh, cause I was like, wait,
37:50
Speaker 1: what's going on here? It was just hopping all around. Um,
37:58
Speaker 1: I did enjoy it. It was a strange one though. Uh,
38:01
Speaker 1: here's another quote. And this was after her traumatic experience
38:09
Speaker 1: where the kids pranked her. Um, I understood that knowledge
38:14
Speaker 1: was a dwarfing, obliterating, all-consuming thing. And to have it
38:18
Speaker 1: was to both be grateful and suffer greatly. Which I like.
38:23
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
38:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, yeah, that one has a lot of conversation
38:32
Speaker 1: back and forth about art. And I was reading a
38:39
Speaker 1: review from NPR about it. And they had a good,
38:46
Speaker 1: I guess, kind of takeaway where they were like, there's
38:49
Speaker 1: some things we can't fight or control necessarily. But if
38:55
Speaker 1: you're going to be the mad woman, at least make
38:57
Speaker 1: it your attic. People are going to label you that way.
39:00
Speaker 1: It is your attic. So, yeah, I really enjoyed it.
39:07
Speaker 1: I thought it was fun. It's definitely a strange, surreal experience.
39:15
Speaker 1: I did want to include this final quote. This is
39:17
Speaker 1: from the acknowledgement, which I did read after our conversation
39:22
Speaker 1: with Genevieve. Every woman artist who has come before me,
39:27
Speaker 1: I am speechless in the face of their courage. Yeah.
39:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:35
Speaker 1: Well, she has really, she's written so much and has
39:41
Speaker 1: been so successful and I'm really happy about that. And
39:45
Speaker 1: I'm like, now I want to read your other books. Right.
39:50
Speaker 2: This was definitely one of those that was like, well,
39:52
Speaker 2: it's going to be stuck in my head for a while.
39:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of food for thought, for sure. Yeah,
40:00
Speaker 1: and the imagery is just so visceral to me. But
40:06
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the different writing
40:09
Speaker 1: styles with everyone. I thought that was really cool. And creative.
40:16
Speaker 1: The stories were creative.
40:18
Speaker 2: Very.
40:18
Speaker 1: Yes, yes. Well... listeners as always if you have any
40:23
Speaker 1: suggestions for what our next pick should be or if
40:26
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts about this one please let us
40:28
Speaker 1: know you can email us at hello at stuff whenever
40:31
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40:33
Speaker 1: on stuff podcast or on instagram and tiktok at stuff
40:35
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40:37
Speaker 1: merchandise at cotton bureau and we have a book you
40:39
Speaker 1: can get wherever you get your books thanks as always
40:41
Speaker 1: to our super producer rima and our executive person maya
40:44
Speaker 1: thank you thanks to you for listening Tough One Never
40:47
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