Her Body Among Animals
by Paola Ferrante
Book*hug Press
264 pages
$23
Paola Ferrante’s debut short story collection, Her Body Among Animals, blends genres and fantastical worlds that further the reader’s experience of what it means to be a woman and to be alive today. Rooted in human realities, Ferrante’s eleven stories examine the physical and mental boundaries that women face through the manifestation of the human body.
The collection opens with “When Foxes Die Electric,” where Harmony, a sentient sex robot originally created by a couple to better the world, is programmed to just feel and not think. In Ferrante’s other stories, a travelling teacher talks of snakes and Houdinis; a husband turns into a dragon when violent; a car crash victim collects her thoughts; an unfulfilled wife turns into a spider; a universal Mother machine guides a group of mothers; an unseen girl turns into a shadow.
Ferrante’s writing is unflinching, continuously pushing characters against unrealized realities, human existence against the metaphysical, ecosystems against uncompromising catastrophes. The unrelenting themes of human violence, failing ecosystems, and toxic masculinity that grip us today are woven ever-tightly into each story like the webs of the unfulfilled wife-turned-spider in “Cobwebs.” Using detailed description of the horrific and the magical, Ferrante pulls us into this in-between world where women are able to survive the demands of the world and their own desires by filling the gaps with that of another being: a spider that can craft for hours and slink off to corners when they need to escape; a mermaid tail that can take you deep underwater where besotted young girls go; an albatross to carry the weight of mental illnesses. Playing with these uncanny relations—and with a dark tinge that reminds you of Black Mirror—Ferrante is able to bring global existential challenges to the now and the dire.
With a firm grasp of our grim reality, Ferrante daringly explores what it means to be a woman and what it means to live in exposed ecosystems. Readers will take flight with the characters through infinite worlds where realities and unrealities intersect to allow for human metamorphoses, both in body and mind. Her Body Among Animals is a collection of stories that will haunt you even after you put the book down.
