Her work reminds me at different times of such wildly divergent figures as David Lynch, Jane Campion, Maggie Nelson and Grace Paley, which is a way of saying Machado sounds like nobody but herself. I know she lives with her wife in Philadelphia, and I know she's a true original, cross-pollinating fairy tales, horror movies, TV shows and a terrific sense of humor. That happened to me with "Her Body And Other Parties," a first collection of stories by Carmen Maria Machado, an extraordinary young writer about whom I know very little. What I want most is to be grabbed by a fresh and compelling way of seeing the world, to encounter a voice that makes me think, I can't wait to spend my day with this person. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Whenever I open a new work of fiction, I'm not looking for the stuff that we critics talk about - you know, a dazzling prose style or a big, important theme. The book was recently named one of the five finalists for the National Book Award in fiction. It's called "Her Body And Other Parties." It's the first collection of short stories by Carmen Maria Machado. Our critic-at-large John Powers has a review of a new book he says wowed him right from the start.
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