Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation

by Lisa Tuttle

Fifteen stories dealing with boundaries between the sexes, facsimile humans, dreams of the dead, nightmares, and marriage in the future.

Stories include: A Mother's Heart; Bits and Pieces; Dead Television; Other Room; Skin Deep; Lizard Lust; Colonization of Edwin Beal; Spirit Cabinet; Jamie's Grave; Riding the Nightmare; Heart's Desire; The Wound; Husbands; A Birthday.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Collections, Weird Fiction, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1992

About the author

(Wife of Colin Murray) aka Maria Palmer (house pseudonym).

Lisa Tuttle taught a science fiction course at the City Lit College, part of London University, and has tutored on the Arvon courses. She was residential tutor at the Clarion West SF writing workshop in Seattle, USA. She has published six novels and two short story collections. Many of her books have been translated into French and German editions.

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Memories of the Body doesn't quite match the consistent level of excellence of her earlier horror collection, 1986's A Nest of Nightmares, the highs here are up there with anything I've read in the genre, and should have cemented Lisa Tuttle's status as one of the leading voices of the horror boom era. Instead, it pretty much vanished without a trace due to the fact that, much like her two previous collections, it was never released here in the states, which is a shame.

The stories are at turns frightening, hallucinatory, heartbreaking, and disturbing, and sometimes all at once. They often feature female protagonists dealing with real-world issues such as loss or heartbreak, until unreality slowly starts to seep in. The horrors here aren't upfront or straight-up terrifying, but more subtle and psychological, sometimes dream-like, and with an ever-present creeping dread that relies a lot on the atmospheric build-up. One thing I like about Tuttle's stories is that they're rarely reliant on some final twist -- the sense of unease permeates the entirety of them.

A few of my favorites are "The Spirit Cabinet," about a woman's new piece of antique furniture that may be a doorway to a Victorian-era seance, "The Other Room," concerning a man who returns to the home of his late grandfather, now an office building, in order to find out if the seemingly haunted "hidden room" from his childhood was real or imaginary, and "Riding the Nightmare," about a woman whose lucid dreams of riding a centaur-like creature cause tragic, real-world consequences.

Unfortunately, one of her best tales from the same era as these, "The Dragon's Bride," is not collected here, perhaps because of its novella length. It is, however, easily (and cheaply) obtainable in the excellent George RR Martin-edited anthology Night Visions 3 (aka Night Visions: The Hellbound Heart), along with two other top-tier Tuttle stories. Overall, though, this is an outstanding collection, one that's well worth seeking out for horror/weird aficionados.

4.5 Stars

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the jacket copy touts Lisa Tuttle as being on the cutting edge of science fiction, this collection falls more into the horror realm. I would call this domestic horror, as many of the stories deal with interpersonal relationships, often romantic ones between women and men, with some particularly unique inquiries into gender. Some of them feature twisty kind of endings while others are just vaguely weird all the way through. Tuttle's premises are pretty original, but I felt at times she erred on the side of over-explaining, which diluted the weirdness for me. I was reminded of Rachel Ingalls, and actually some of my complaints about her short fiction similarly apply to this collection. Namely, the general flatness of the characters and the hit-or-miss endings. Still, it was a worthwhile read for the originality of the stories.

[JennRa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro tiene que ser por mucho el libro más extraño que he leído en mi vida ¡me ha encantado!. Una antología excelente de cuentos muy diversos y que a la vez siguen un mismo patrón, un mundo femenino extraño e inquietante en el que se mezcla la fantasía, la ciencia ficción y el terror.

[Vir · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF…no se puede leer, lo buscaré en inglés

[Miguel Lupián · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa es mi autora favorita de terror [en mi curso de weird analizamos los cuentos de Nido de pesadillas y su prólogo de La piel del alma] y esta colección es simplemente brutal. La forma en que disecciona a sus personajes, su imaginación, el uso de los tópicos clásicos del terror para subvertirlos, su transgresión... Todo en ella es brutal.

[Bogi Takács]

I'll be reviewing this one for my column on Tor.com (IY"H soon; I wanted to finish the review today, but something came up)
_____
Source of the book: KU Watson Library

[Amy Gentry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 1992 Lisa Tuttle collection of speculative stories themed around gender, sex, and desire is characteristically strong, and often feels ahead of its time. "Husbands" (probably my favorite) is a genre-defying showstopper reminiscent of Doris Lessing, "The Wound" a sly take on Ursula K. LeGuin, and "Lizard Lust" one of the most horrifying and matter-of-fact takes on sexual violence I have ever read. There's even a proto-"Cat Person"/bad-sex-as-emotional-violence-on-a-continuum-with-real-violence story ("Bits and Pieces"), and one where an open marriage is happening in the background without being the source of the horror ("Riding the Nightmare").

Because most of these stories were first published in the 1980s, some of the nuances in the trans-adjacent stories are outdated--these are definitely white cis '70s feminist takes on gender fluidity--but in some ways, their naivety makes the book feel very earnest in its prescience. You can feel these stories as thought experiments emerging along a vector of gender melancholy, curiosity, and yearning that takes nothing for granted.

There are also quite a few minor stories with a single "weird tales" twist, but even those generally had something interesting to say. "Jamie's Grave" and "Riding the Nightmare" are spine-shivering takes on motherhood. And even the slightest stories are slow-build character studies packed with the odd, lived-in details that Tuttle is so good at, while somehow managing to keep the pages turning. To say that only 3-4 stories were life changing is to give you an idea how much I'm enjoying this writer.

[Rachel]

I read this book years ago - like almost 20 years ago - and I will never forget it. Edited like a close shave and each twist so tasty. I'm hesitant to read it again in case it was a case of 'right place, right time' but I will if I can get my hands on another copy.

[Marina Trigo Cuevas · Rating 4 out of 5]

La calificación de 4 puntos está basada principalmente en los últimos siete cuentos. Cuando cogí el libro, los ocho primeros se me hicieron pesados a causa de que la trama de terror que se describía te acercaba a situaciones de la vida cotidiana de mujeres con las que no podía llegar, no tanto empatizar, sino comprender el miedo y el terror de lo allí relatado. Con esto no quiero decir que objetivamente los cuentos fuesen malos, sino que no conseguían generarme esa tensión y ese miedo que deberían. Las tramas de estos cuentos versan sobre la maternidad y la menopausia.
Por esta razón abandoné un poco el libro y lo recuperé recientemente devorando los siete cuentos que me quedaban. Con estas historias pude verdaderamente sentir nudos en el estómago por los relatos de situaciones acerca de mujeres que en sus vidas cotidianas o en el hilo de sus pensamientos algo se tornaba terrorífico o profundamente extraño a la vez que real. También destacar un par de cuentos sobre la muerte, la soledad y el amor desde la perspectiva de un personaje masculino que también son muy interesantes.
En definitiva, más que recomendar la recopilación, destacaría determinados cuentos que me han mantenido en vilo hasta terminar la historia.

[Alicia Gil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hasta el momento he leído siete de los 15 relatos de terror que componen esta recopilación. Los estoy leyendo en inglés porque, aunque compré la versión en español en el Celsius y de hecho esperé hasta que la señora Tuttle me la firmó, la verdad es que la traducción es tan mala que no pude terminar siquiera el primer relato.

Dicho esto, me pasó con ese primer cuento, Deseo del corazón, (**) lo que a Felicidad Martínez con el relato que abre Inquilinos: no me convenció en absoluto. Me dejó fría, no terminé de comprender lo que había sucedido y además la prosa me pareció en exceso simple. De todas formas, continué leyendo porque, bueno, había comprado TAMBIÉN la versión en inglés y no me apetecía admitir ante el mundo que me había equivocado dos veces. Así que leí más…

http://www.aliciaperezgil.com/?p=2793

[Mónica Casado · Rating 4 out of 5]

No le pongo 5 estrellas porque considero que la traducción, plagada de fallos, es bastante endeble. Sin embargo, los relatos me han encantado.

[Nadya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Qué despropósito de traducción. 🤦🏻‍♀️

[Wyatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dad saw that I was reading this and assumed it was a romance novel from its cover; he assured me that there was “nothing wrong with reading a romance book” when I had trouble describing the actual genre of Tuttle’s story collection. Most of these are best described as “horror” stories, but some are closer to straight science fiction, and almost all of them deal with subject matter that is absent in much other horror.

The best story here, by my estimation, is “The Wound,” an examination of two men’s budding relationship in a world that is only slightly dissimilar to our own. That story, and most of the stories in the first half of this collection, spend their time blurring the lines between genders and genres; the second half of the collection ends up going for more standard horror thrills. “Dead Television” reads like it could be a King story from the same era; “Bits and Pieces” feels like an erotic “Tales from the Darkside” episode.

The collection might not be as strong as “A Nest of Nightmares,” but it does show a writer caught in the midst of maturation. I’m excited to crack into what seems to be her more “straight up” science fiction collection from the same era…