Rating: 78% | C+ | ★★★☆☆
Warnings: + Eating disorders Synopsis (from Goodreads): Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam—by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family—and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey. Review: Milk Fed has been the darling of the book community—specifically the blasé, cool girl sub-sect of the community since the book's release in 2021. Melissa Broder's dry wit sweeps up eating disorders, family dysfunctions, and queerness in its rushing current. Broder's descriptions of food are at once delectable—burritos swaddled in tortilla blankets and frozen yogurt bedazzled with toppings—and unsettling, reflecting the mood of the novel. Milk Fed is minimalist; the characters frequent the same locations and talk only amongst themselves. The claustrophobia, the lack of alternative lives and alternative choices, is acute. Supporting characters, including Rachel's offscreen mother, add to the haze. Like Elaine Hsieh Chou's Disorientation, Milk Fed is a satire with persistent emotional appeal, and its greatest strength is perhaps not its focus on Rachel's eating disorder but its window into the complex relationship between Rachel and her mother. Milk Fed is a novel written by a woman, for women, in an intimate shorthand on modern beauty standards and familial relationships. You will drop to your knees. You will hold yourself. You will be your own daughter again.
Milk Fed falls short in its overall arc. Satire is always a toss-up for me, and in this particular instance I'm unsure if I can commit myself fully to Broder's vision. Satire seems to be her aspiration, but Milk Fed feels far more serious—at least on its surface and even on its immediate sub-layers—than its contemporary satirical peers.
And, as a story, its cohesion is wounded in the last few chapters. The end of the novel emphasizes a different theme than the food-related one Broder explores in the rest of the novel, abruptly turning the reader in a different direction. The characters remain largely enigmas, with minimal development. Still, Milk Fed is extremely timely and deserving of its attention; it is a novel that prompts a turn inward.
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From the ArchiveWhile my main reviews are organized by seasons and I try to write reviews immediately after I finish reading, there are always stories that lose to the hustle and bustle of everyday life. From the Archive is a redemptive collection of mini-reviews of books I read in the past that continue to captivate me.
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