Milk Fed
Ratings80
Average rating3.6
I love this book! I listen to it in one day. It wasn't what I usually go for, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. I thought it was so interesting. I thought that the main character battle with eating disorder and food in general was so real and I felt it was so deeply connected to my real life. I relate to the story so much and I absolutely loved it. I highly recommend.!!
Will stop at 12%. I guess neurotic young women are not as fun if there are no mermen involved.
3,75
weird, but in the good way
the mommy issues and the eating disorder was really really well executed, raw still real.
I was not a fan. As a Type A person myself I was rooting for her to stick to her rules even knowing this was not good for her, so it was really conflicting. I liked some part of it but felt like the ending was rushed and could have been more refined to get more of a happy ending.
Felt a bit awkward listening to this one full blast in the car but overall loved the different minorities it represented and how it beautifully described a day body
This book is one of the best niche subjects around. Bulimic, Jew Lesbian fuckery.
I'm not sure how I came across this book, and I somehow missed that this was by the same author who wrote The Pisces. I feel bad giving it two stars because I think I'm just not her audience.
There's some interesting themes around eating disorders, self hate/acceptance, parent/child relationships that were explored among other things, but parts of it was just so gross it kept me at a distance and I couldn't really enjoy it.
That said, I'm so glad the writer is who she is and writes what she wants how she wants to write it. She doesn't shy away and that's admirable.
after i finished reading it, i realized how little i cared for this book, its characters and plot.
Also, adding this note: though i didn't enjoy the story and didn't like the characters that much, but one thing i appreciated was melissa broder's view on isrel-palestine situation where she noted isrel building a country on the expense of palestinians losing their homes and lives. I appreciated that about this book.
After reading 1 star reviews saying it was disgusting I was expecting that but the book was perfectly fine. I really like the way Broder writes.
I will die for this book.
–
4.5 stars
The Pisces was my top book of 2018, so I had high expectations for Broder's sophomore novel. While I didn't love this quite as much, I still devoured it. While The Pisces felt like a deep exploration of depression to me, Milk Fed is an exploration of disordered eating. Rachel, the narrator, is a Jewish woman who was raised by an overly critical mother and who uses food restriction as a religion, spending all her time thinking about eating.
I found the portrayal of binge eating in this incredibly spot-on, and thought Rachel's changing relationship with her body — and Miriam's — was interesting. I think there are going to be some varying views on the fat representation here and I'm not positive where I fall. Miriam never felt like a fully-formed character to me, but I think that was part of the point: Rachel coveted her in an unhealthy way, obsessing over Miriam's body the way she obsessed over her own.
Much like The Pisces, I'm not sure who I would recommend this to. It certainly won't please everyone, but if you're able to let go and trust Broder I think you're in for a good ride.
I feel like I didn't love this book partly because of my expectations. I wanted a book about food. About her mother and her eating disorder. I was surprised at how the book shifted so quickly from this to romance.
And romance isn't even the right word. I love a sapphic read and I also don't MIND sex scenes. But the scenes in here were hard to get through. I think this was mostly because the tonal switch from regular conversation to sex was so intense and went in and out very often. I understand that sex is a part of life but we're not meant to get every detail of it. I think the handful of sex scenes could've been shaved down. It just takes away from the larger topics that didn't get enough airtime. The sex was not profound, at least in its frequency. I know this seems like a prudish take, but I was genuinely not expecting this book to be so glued to clits and wetness and finger fucking. It's barely dealing with sexuality, mostly just sex itself.
A big element of this story is our narrator's mother. The entire time, there's this assumed build to something dramatic and heart wrenching. We never get there. The book ends so abruptly when there was so much more to explore. What information we did get about her mother was (INSANELY) during masturbation and sex. I just wished it was handled with more care is all.
One of my biggest criticism that I know most people will not agree with is how unlikeable this narrator is, specifically in the way she thinks about Miriam. This is a fat woman just minding her own goddamn business. Our narrator literally admits to wanting to “improve her”. Also, I totally imagined Miriam as hispanic for a long time. Even after she was described I was just like, nah she's totally just a hispanic woman with dark hair and a nice smile! I think that made it bearable, making something of my own with what I was given.
The writing wasn't bad, though the dialogue was sometimes awkward. Sometimes it was purposeful and hit. Other times, it fell flat for me and made me eye roll. Some things are not profound just because you proclaim them to be.
memorable lines:
“As I teased, I smelled the faintest waft of shit coming from underneath her” p. 218
“I'd worn skirt and tank on purpose, because I knew that I looked thin in the outfit. I wanted to accentuate this feature to remind Miriam of what I was and of what she was in that old competition between women. If I was going to be vulnerable, express that I wanted her, then I needed to already be some kind of victor” p. 209... because holy shit.
