In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Toy Story Kristin Thiel The Body Parts Shop Lynda Schor FC2 http://fc2.org 169 pages; paper, $14.95 Lips; heartache; hair; five perfect little plastic fingers, three melted together in a duplicitous salute to femininity: Lynda Schor's The Body Parts Shop is that deliciously creepy storefront off the main drag, the one whose wares are so personal they're frightening , yet so universal as to be mundane. Though some of the messages in the collection have already been expressed to the point of cliché, Schor's book is well worth a thorough read. She is brazenly graceful at detailing the fantastical reality where sex, violence, and commerce meet, and absorbing her words makes a reader feel both a little brasher and a little more introspective. Take, for example, "Interviewing Barbie," in which a reporter is assigned to shadow Stockbroker Barbie, a keynote speaker at a convention celebrating the doll's thirty-fifth birthday. Schor's nine-inch-tall Stockbroker Barbie is all doll, from her plastic fingers tohertoeless feet, exceptthat she also breathes, thinks, talks, and feels. Schor is of course not the first to consider the relationship American women and girls have with Mattel's leading lady, and she more than once explains, when explanation is no longer necessary, that Barbie is a cultural demagogue both idolized and despised. At one point, the narrator reporter notices Barbie's breasts, and we know what she's going to say even before she says it: "They're like the breasts in photos of my mother in high school—what my friends and I now call torpedo breasts. I feel an urge to smash them. Yet I'd like to have them." And later, after a Ken doll lasciviously winks at her, the reporter comments, "I'm not surprised to feel the chill of fear. What surprises me is the erotic electricity charging through me." Still, there's something refreshing in eavesdropping when the doll herselfjoins the discussion. Maybe it's because everyone has dreamed, no matter his or her childhood toy ofchoice, ofthat toy coming to life to answer directly all of life's questions. Maybe it's because Stockbroker Barbie is interestingly, uncomfortably a multidimensional player in Schor's story rather than just a voiceless subject. One moment she is acorporate mouthpiece answering probing questions with unsatisfying facts, the next she is a thoughtful businessperson ("[Barbie's] body can't be changed, or her clothes won't fit. She's an industry."). She has a horrible home life and an abusive husband, but she always comes to work smiling. The story's final scene, an extreme expression of Barbie-lust/revulsion, is expected but still shocking. Schor explores the variety ofways our bodies become consumable goods. Within The Body Parts Shop, Schor explores the variety ofways ourbodies become consumable goods. In "Interviewing Barbie," an image is purchased. In "The Scalp Agency," physical hair is for sale. Carl, not yet thirty and balding, is obsessed with having hair again. After unsuccessful minor attempts to regrow hair, he opts for a complete transplant. Carl pays a starving artist forhis hair, but afterthe surgery it seems like the only person who will remain completely happy is the scalp agent, who exhibits his own hair fetish "as he holds the packet of checks before he takes them to the bank, feeling its weight, feeling each flip silkily back as he riffles them absently, sensuously, between his fingers." "Lips" is a rumination on society's fascination with the outside of the mouth. The story belongs to a young female narrator exploring the mouth's history of sex and violence. At one point, she watches a vampire movie, noting that the female victim goes limp with "uncontrollable weakness and desire" when the monster bites her and that his lips were "bright red and dripping," not completely unlike a lipsticked mouth. The narrator 's first kiss is not about her or him, affection or love. Rather, all she can think about is their mouths: "When our lips meet, they begin to glow. They grow enormous, and spread into each other. . .. Ourpressed-togethermouths radiate their own moisture, heat and light, and expand more, until they are...

pdf