A wonderful short story collection. These stark and honest stories will cut to the bone and leave a scar. ( )

St. Barts 2013 #4 - A dark collections of stories by Thon that leave me with mixed feelings.....I enjoyed the first one very much until the end when I completely lost track of what was going on....thinking 'why did she go and derail a perfectly good story?' The next several stories also contained this 'stream of conscious' quality that again left me scratching my head....(again, I'm no genius here....I read for enjoyment)....ready to give up, I was progressively surprised with the final few stories in this book, my favorite being the last one, 'Necessary Angels.' Thematically on the down side, but with some merit, 3 stars is all i can give. ( )

I'm particularly fascinated by literary representations of the human body, that process that turns ink and paper into flesh and bone, so it's hard for me to give "First, Body" a negative review. Thon's body-centric collection of short stories does, at any rate, deliver on its premise: the human form undergoes a dizzying number of permutations here, and the author describes its constantly shifting appearance and meaning with great care. At the same time, readers who like to enjoy seeing the solidity and physicality of our bodies expressed in print are likely to be disappointed. While Thon's prose is focused on the physical, it also has an airy, delicate quality to it that's miles away from, say, Hemingway or Lawrence's unapologetic celebrations of the flesh. Several of these stories also veer into fantasy or new age territory and, while these themes are dealt with skilfully, they may not be to everyone's taste. More problematic still is the fact that many of these stories deal with bodies that have been abused or neglected. Again, Thon shows genuine empathy for her characters, but I'm still not sure there's a way to write about underage homeless prostitutes without seeming sort of exploitative – heck, ask "J.T. Leroy" about that. These criticisms are mostly matters of personal taste, though, and might have somethig to do with your reviewer's male gender and expectations. Thon's book is still a good addition to what we might call the literature of the body, the way that our physical forms look, feel, act and breathe in text. ( )