Tara’s Reviews > Her Body and Other Parties: Stories > Status Update

The Resident
“Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness. Pray that one day, you will spin around at the water’s edge, lean over, and be able to count yourself among the lucky.”

The Resident
“And when my fever broke, I pulled my shaking body up to the vanity, glanced into the mirror, and for the first time, saw who I’d been looking for.”

Real Women Have Bodies
“I am always surprised at the poetry with which boys can describe boning.”

“The things she says are disjointed, but familiar; Benson recognizes a quote from “Moby-Dick”, and another from “The Price of Salt”. They put the girl in a foster home, where she continues to express her grief and lamentations through everyone else’s words.”

“In the tangle of branches, baby birds – the gray and pink of half cooked shrimp and with bones like dried spaghetti – scream for their mothers.”

“I am up for a long time listening to his breathing, wondering if perhaps men have ribbons that do not look like ribbons. Maybe we marked in some way, even if it’s impossible to see.”

“As a grown woman, I would have said to my father that there are true things in this world observed only by a single set of eyes. As a girl, I consented to his account of the story, and laughed when he scooped me from the chair to kiss me and send me on my way.”

“gos should have made girls lethal
when he made monsters of men.”
- Elisabeth Hewer