Summary

The sixth story of the collection, “Eight Bites,” features a return to Machado’s favorite: the unnamed first-person female narrator. While the style seems to be a return to a comfort, there is one jarring difference with this story from the rest: this is the first story in the collection which does not feature any male characters. No husbands, boyfriends, sons; no, this story is particularly for women.

Another in media res start, readers are thrust into a discussion between the narrator’s doctor and a nurse in a present-period, seemingly in the middle of a surgical operation that the narrator has been put under for (Location 2019). Immediately following this short phasing-in of the conversation, the story then starts further back in time so as to elaborate and develop the reasoning behind the narrator’s surgery. The readers are placed in a wintery...