Manger l'autre

by Ananda Devi

Une jeune adolescente, née obèse, mange, grossit et s'isole. Sa mère s'enfuit, horrifiée par son enfant. Ses camarades de classe la photographient sans répit pour nourrir le grand Œil d'internet. Son père, convaincu qu'elle aurait dévoré in utero sa jumelle, cuisine des heures durant pour nourrir ses princesses. Seule, effrayée par ce corps monstrueux, elle tente de comprendre qui elle est vraiment. Quand elle rencontre par accident l'amour et fait l'experience d'autres plaisirs de la chair, elle semble enfin être en mesure de s'accepter. Mais le calvaire a-t-il une fin pour les êtres différents ?

Conte de la dévoration et roman de l’excès, Manger l'autre est une allégorie de notre société avide de consommer, obsédée par le culte de la minceur et de l'image conforme.

Avec force, virtuosité, et humour, Ananda Devi brise le tabou du corps et expose au grand jour les affres d'un personnage qui reflète en miroir notre monde violemment intrusif et absurdement consumériste.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, France, Mauritius, Translated Fiction

224 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 10, 2018

About the author

Ananda Devi is a Mauritian writer. Her novel, Eve de ses décombres, won the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie in 2006, as well as several other prizes. It was adapted for the cinema by Sharvan Anenden and Harrikrisna Anenden. In 2007, Devi received the Certificat d'Honneur Maurice Cagnon du Conseil International d'Études Francophones.[1] She has since won other literary prizes, including the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature française of the Académie française. During 2010 she was bestowed with Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.

Reviews

[Lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

???? WHAT

I picked this book up on a whim as it sounded sort of strange (not an insult - I live for weird books lol), and it didnt let me down

It was certainly odd, but it was also a gorgeously written and heartbreaking story about what it's like to be a teenage girl living in a morbidly obese body. The inability to move around, the pain, alienation, and the desperate need to be desired in whatever way someone will have you - no matter how degrading - are the main themes of this book. I've never been obese, but I certainly relate to certain aspects of her struggle. A look into how physical appearance can be so all consuming, especially for teenage girls

[thevampireslibrary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Uhm I can see what message the author was TRYING to get across but I think they failed in delivering it, was the "revenge" in the room with us ???

[Rachel]

A no-holds-barred examination of society and its relationship with fatness from the perspective of a morbidly obese teenager--or, as the character herself would say, morbidly obese no longer describes her, she's simply morbid. Born as a 22 pound baby to a mother who flees not long after discovering the ravenous appetite of her daughter and a father who copes by referring to his daughter as two individual beings, the daughter in the flesh and the other who was eaten in the womb. Though her father is the only person in her life who treats her with kindness, who satisfies her every need to her own detriment, he is still never able to view her as she truly is.

Devi attempts to "blow the hypocrisies and prejudice of society to smithereens" by using this young girl's body, a body literally being force-fed to death, as a metaphor for society's infatuation with both thinness and overconsumption, a society that participates in so many forms of unhealthy excess but looks at indulging in an excess of food with hostility and cruelty. And at times, I saw what the author was trying to do, but the more I've sat with this novel after finishing it a few weeks ago, the more I agree with the Kirkus review when they categorize the novel as "disturbing throughout, ultimately in ways that undermine the author's core message". Devi is so over the top with the grotesque display of the narrator's hunger and overindulgence and goes to such exaggerated lengths to portray this young girl as something of a monster, as the Other that I think the novel has the opposite effect of what she intended.

Devi's writing is the strong point here, though the pace lagged for me in the first half as the inner narrative in the girl's becomes repetitive. But her pen is strong and sharp, I cannot fault the quality of her writing. I'll be interested to read more reviews from others as we get closer to its pub date.

[Nathália · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-4.5

That ending… INTENSE.

[LX · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you for thr e-arc

1.25 stars

purely for some of the writing?? I guess?? probs less idk

I was wondering if this would affect me more than I had anticipated due to the subject matter, I'm just pissed. I hated that this was just a narrative of "This is how people living with a fat body feel and perceive themselves, and how others see and think about them. There is no hope, no love, nothing." I thought this book was going to be about a girl who got a hunger for revenge after what she goes through? Not really??? Like where was the revenge!? The ending???? I don't call that revenge more of a, welp there's no hope so...might as well!!!!

Give me a deeper meaning behind the absolutely ridiculous standards people feel they need to fit into/what others push, give me something to root for, give me a narrator who is making some sort of sense than just talking in adjectives for food or her body.

Her body became everything to focus on, which is often described by mostly herself, and a few classmates, as every negative adjective you can think of, so instead of just describing her size, it had to be described with a sense of disgust, because again, she's not thin. Even her parents referring her to 'it' and also her dad making out she needs to eat for two due to her size and her 'sister', but it felt almost forced???

We as the reader HAVE to witness & know how horrid she is, how disgusting she is, all because she is fat. That is it. Reminder after reminder. She is fat, did you know she's fat? Not only that SHE IS MORBID. SHE IS DISGUSTED WITH HERSELF. AND SO IS EVERYONE ELSE. YES. Like...where are we going with this as a story???

The dehumanising of people who don't fit the 'standards' of beauty was there but while also being continuously dehumanised for you to understand, if that makes sense. It hardly really touched up on the subject on beauty standards and how they're impossible because no matter what, you will always be too big or too small, too this, too that to fit into them. It didn't give us the revenge story I was expecting so I thought, ah okay are we going to get a story about battling and crushing the standards? Nope.

This isn't a character we are following, she is nothing but a mass for you to witness and read on how much she cannot stop eating, how much everyone and herself hates her, how she could have been something if she was thin, how no one will love her, how she herself cannot love herself because of her size. The fact she can only find 'love' is by being fetishised by a 30 year old man????? as she likes to remind us, both her and her father both know, no one else would ever, ever dare to look, touch, be with her, the way this man does so it's him or dying alone I guess. Like, pardon????

It felt like a more like a 'this obese girl hates herself because of her size, and that is all she has to offer, nothing else to anyone, not even herself.' And that's disappointing. There are other ways to go about the standards of weight and beauty, and what people feel and go through. As someone who has a chronic immune disease that has affected her weight, view of self, mental health her whole life, I was actually looking forward to this as a story I could relate to, feel somewhat empowered that a girl who is written as bigger in size in the premise of having a wild, unhinged story written where she would be somewhat uplifted in her revenge, and yet it just felt like the complete opposite

[endrju]

With an ending worthy of a New French Extremism film (I’m looking at you, Marina de Van, especially Dans ma peau), the novel is clearly designed to shock and awe. While it certainly sent a shiver or two down my spine, it also put me in a reflective mood. I found myself wondering what kinds of signifiers we use to talk about embodied power relations and socio-political phenomena in our academic work and in art—and what sort of cultural labour those signifiers perform.

When we use an (extremely) fat body as a signifier for something other than itself, what does that practice reflect back onto such a body? Do we not, in some sense, misuse it? And with that misuse, do we not also violate it? I feel a similar unease when animals, plants, and other more-than-human or non-human entities are deployed as metaphors, symbols, or any other kind of linguistic material. What I’m trying to get at here goes far beyond the human body and its (often rather petty) identity claims.

I suppose I must have liked the novel quite a lot, given that it prompted all of this—so I can’t help but recommend it.

[DeathReye · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 20%

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published April 28, 2026.

4 stars

Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman.

Haunting story of a morbidly obese teenage girl who is both defined and trapped by her weight. She was born a 22 pound baby. Her mother left, her father believes that she absorbed her twin in the womb and that she eats for two; he refers to her as “my girls.”

This was dark dark dark, but so well done. Recommended.

[Alex-Mot-à-Mots · Rating 5 out of 5]

On dit que l’anorexie est la faim du père. La boulimie serait-elle la faim de la mère ?

La jeune fille qui est l’héroïne de ce roman, et qui n’a pas de prénom (tiens ?), est née obèse. Songez, un poupon de 10 kilos… Sa mère américaine au physique de star les quitte vite, elle et son père.

Son père qui est persuadé qu’elles sont deux, qui fait à manger pour deux, qui leur parle au pluriel.

La jeune fille nous décrit les humiliations verbales qu’elle subit, les regards blessants et vengeurs des professeurs, les photos volées et postées.

Puis un jour, elle ne peut plus quitter son lit et sa chambre.

L’auteure nous décrit cette irrépressible faim que rien ne rassasie dans notre société basée sur l’image et le contrôle (de soi, de son corps).

J’ai aimé suivre cette jeune fille à l’obésité morbide, ses réflexions sur ceux qui l’entoure, y compris son pauvre père. Car si son corps n’est pas dans la norme, son cerveau, lui aussi, sait s’affranchir de la norme. Mais que veut-elle, au juste ?

J’ai aimé que la jeune femme rencontre l’amour sous le regard bienveillant de son père.

Même si la fin m’a horrifiée, il ne pouvait y en avoir d’autre.

Une lecture qui m’a poursuivi une fois le livre refermé.

Un roman qui interroge sans discriminer, ce que j’apprécie toujours.

L’image que je retiendrai :

Celle du rouleau de tissu que réserve pour elle la couturière pour pouvoir la vêtir.

Quelques citations :

« Les individus des autres espèces se sacrifient pour la survie du plus grand nombre ; nous, nous ferons tout pour survivre, au prix du plus grand nombre. » (p.32)

« A la conversation que toutes les mères doivent un jour avoir avec leur fille adolescente : tu dois apprendre à aimer ton corps » (p.79)

« … comment ni les parents ni l’école n’ont su inculquer des principes fondamentaux à cette génération d’exhibitionnistes. (…) Ce que l’on appelle les phénomènes viraux sont nos nouvelles divinités : ils savent capter nos passions éphémères. » (p.138)

« L’image ne pardonne pas. » (p.141)

« Pauvre père. Il ne mesure pas l’étendue du monde virtuel. On ne peut pas en sortir. Il est éternel. Il est partout. infini. Il n’y a pas d’outil possible puisqu’il est hors du temps et de l’espace. Nous avons inventé l’enfer. » (p.144)

« Dès que les commentaires publics ont été autorisés, le monde s’est lâché. Le pire est remonté à la surface comme une écume nauséabonde. Pourquoi n’est-ce pas le meilleur de nous qui en est ressorti ?Les voix bienveillantes, les voix mesurées, les voix raisonnables ? Elles ont été étouffées par les autres. Ce qu’on entend, c’est la cacophonie de notre époque, celle de nos âmes, celle de nos consciences. » (p.153)

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm the pinnacle of your excesses. The one who will burst to prove to men lucky enough to be born under better circumstances that food is their modern god. When did we cease to eat merely to survive? When did we come across the flavors and substances that have become our obsession and our doom? When did our world begin to revolve around consumption? Epicureanism as euthanasia! What we most keenly, most violently desire is what poisons us.

All Flesh (2026) is Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Manger l’autre (2018) by the Neustadt Prize winning author Ananda Devi, the third of the translator/author's books I've read after Eve out of Her Ruins (2006 tr. 2016) and The Living Days (2013 tr. 2019).

The novel is narrated by a young woman, 16 when the novel end, looking back on her life since birth. She was born a (near) world record size at 22 pounds, and has had an insatiable appetite for food ever since, continuing to grow to monstrous (at least in the eyes of almost all others) size. Her exhausted mother abandoned her while still an infant, although her father, an architect but also an author of cook books, looked after her with devotion, feeding her gourment cuisine, while maintaining an illusion that he actually has two daughters, the second a twin she devoured in the womb, feeding her two separate meals:

He was my shield and my bulwark, fending off glares, never shying away from the scowls that landed on us, but rather confronting them with a calm defiance as if to say: Have the courage to look me in the eye instead of darting yours like a snake’s at my daughter to try to grasp what she is; don’t bother trying, she’ll always be too big for your small mind, she’s more wonderful, more incredible than you could ever be, she’s so far beyond your narrow understanding of things, you who bend to even the silliest rules imposed by other people, who would get surgery just to have a porn star’s boobs, a Venus Callipyge’s ass, a plumper pussy, a pair of lips like that pussy—turn upside down and you’ll see the sordid face of your hard-won beauty, while my daughter has it all and she doesn’t have to embrace the knife! That’s what my father’s eyes said, my knight in armor too shining for such vulgarities, and my heart breaks at the sight of him defying stares and snickers, taking all the body blows of those judgments, and I’m so proud that we’re together, that we’re such a perfect, unlikely pairing, and that he understands it so intuitively, so instinctively, so “maternally,” that he’s the one who made me and that I’m part of him.

But sometimes I think that I’m a part of him the way a tumor is a part of a body: a growth that will be his undoing.

The novel does not spare us the lavicious details of the narrator's obesity, which from aged 14 renders her house-bound, and in the novel's later pages she finds love, and sexual fulfilment with a carpenter who initially comes to the house, along with medics and firefighters, to rescue her when she gets wedged in the bathroom doorway.

In an account that includes literary motifs, such as Macbeth's speech after the death of his wife, a key theme, although not explicitly cited, is Margaret Wolfe Hungerford's "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". The narrator is housebound not just practically but to avoid the cruelty of others, and only in her brief relationship with the carpenter does she start to see, through his eyes, the beauty of her condition, before pictures he has taken are exposed and go viral:

The eye had never stopped tracking me, as it tracks us all, tracks you as well. It surveils, it sees, and it never forgives. But it doesn’t just look; it nurtures fear, suspicion, paranoia, hatred. It feeds you puke and poison. It transforms you. Tomorrow, you won’t see your loved ones the same way. Tomorrow, what was once a remote fear will become an imminent danger.

The 'eye' here being a term for social media, in a novel that otherwise is not strong on

- time - although translated and read in 2026, rather than the original 2018, the references to bariatric surgery, dismissed by her father as too dangerous (or does he prefer to preserve her depencency on him) would be expected to be juxtaposed with consideration of GLP-1 medicines.

- or place. It's not the US, as that's where her mother flees, but otherwise unspecified. The novel is mainly confined, as is she, to the narrator's bedroom and bathroom, although there's an slightly out-of-place vignette when she makes a trip to the airport, her first outside for some months, for an abortive overseas holiday and experiences a world suddenly divided into militia-patrolled slums and walled-in luxury dwellings.

Related to that, one thing I will acknowledge in my appraisal of this novel is calling out my own disappointment about it moving away from a Mauritian setting, which isn't really a fair judgement, as Jeffrey Zuckerman highlighted in an article in World Literature Today after Devi won the Neustadt Prize.

Over the years that I’ve known her, I’ve seen Ananda lauded, variously, as a Mauritian writer, an Indian Ocean writer, an African writer, a francophone writer, a feminist writer, a woman writer. Those labels have always bothered me: I would always think, “Can’t she just, very simply, be a great writer? A writer of great patience, a writer who shifts from language to language, a writer of darkness and beauty? Can’t she simply be Ananda Devi?
And now, with the Neustadt Prize, she is.

That said, this was not a novel Devi herself highlighted in her Neustadt Prize Lecture, and I'd suggest this is not the best starting point to explore her work. In particular it doesn't seem clear if it wants to celebrate a variety of bodily forms (versus the unreal standards of beauty imposed by society and social media on women's bodies in particular), or rather to revel in grotesquery.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

[Charlotte L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5. Un livre très perturbant, qui secoue, qui interroge. Une fin horrible mais incroyablement forte. C'est quelque chose d'attaquer l'année avec un tel récit !

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a unique, genius, hilarious and interesting book about the double standards of women’s bodies, excessive consumption, and beauty. This was relatable on so many levels. The way it’s written is so poetically beautiful and the narrator is absolutely fascinating. At times I gasped, others I laughed, and others I shook my head in agreement. I’ve never read a book quite like this one but I am SO GLAD I did.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Samantha Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shocked and distraught

[Maja · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this but I enjoyed it. “I had committed the sin of not bowing to the cult of thinness and of baring myself with no shame.”

[Camil · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
OH fuck.

This was genius. Disgusting and horrifying. Gross in the best way I can say this.
The book's a great psycological body horror like representation of such a huge hate towards different complexions that can't fit "perfectly" inside what others see good. Dilemas with food and a perfect fucked up plot.

(Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC.)

[Suki J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

4.25

This was wild, in the best possible way.

Our unnamed narrator consumes her twin in the womb, and is born 22 pounds and unable to stop feeding. Her mother, abandons her, overwhelmed, whereas her father is delighted by her size and looks on her as his twin girls.

As she gets older her father cooks delicious food and she continues to eat and grow until she is, as a teenager, mostly bed-bound.

The story took some unexpected turns, and the ending was a what-am-I-reading kind of moment. I liked the twisted revenge narrative, and the commentary on societal beauty standards. The prose was interestingly poetic, and I loved the way it flowed.

This book is one that I'll probably be thinking about for a while.

[Emma Valieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un récit perturbant tellement il est criant de vérité et d'émotions sincères. Tour à tour, je me suis demandé si l'autrice avait soit :
- vécu elle-même le harcèlement scolaire
- vécu elle-même l'obésité
- été grossophobe ou harceleuse
- détesté devenir mère
Car ici la barrière entre la fiction et la réalité est assez infime, quiconque ayant malheureusement expérimenté le mauvais regard des autres ainsi que le sien propre pourra considérer ce roman comme un témoignage plutôt qu'une fiction.

Une expérience littéraire presque nécessaire à lire, qu'on soit dans un "camp" ou dans l'autre qui apportera autant de réconfort que de malaise.

[Mélanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tout le vocabulaire de l'obésité, de la démesure et de l'orgie s'empare de ce court roman. C'est puissant et souvent, dérangeant. Une histoire très contemporaine qui choque et bouleverse, mais qui remet aussi en question notre humanité.

[eesha · Rating 3 out of 5]

thanks to netgalley and FSG for the arc! (3.5 ★)

and this one goes out to all the father’s daughters with a all-encompassing, consuming, rapturous hunger for more. i need to fill the deep dark void inside me with something, you know!

a delightfully fucked up novel and i ate it up, pun fully intended.

all flesh tells the story of our unnamed main character as she reckons with her hunger. it’s gets intense and weird and viciously uncomfortable and i relished it. that’s all i can give you plot-wise, you have to go in blind.

it is about consumption, about the desire of flesh, the absolute cruelty of the world, and the raw animalistic nature of hunger that usurps your misery, a hunger that transcends being. the prose is so vividly descriptive, sparing no detail, reminiscent of “bestiary” by k-ming chang (a book i love love love) but less crude and more relish, is the only way i can describe it. when receiving this arc, i had no idea it was a translated work, when finding that out after starting the book, i was even more excited because one thing i love more than a fucked up novel is a TRANSLATED fucked up novel! (bora chung, sayaka murata, the list goes on) the language in this is so evocative, kudos to the translator but it made me wonder just how hard it must hit in its original french, (and truly this book had to be peak for me to considering learning french. the only language i have zero respect for)

i truly don’t know how what to say in this review. both a critique on the fatphobic society ritualistically obsessed with thinness and a deep story of misery. with such a absolute incredible grasp of language like the writing in this is absolutely stellar in such a provocative manner holy shit dude. i literally have nothing to say. i couldn’t have predicted that ending and yet nothing else makes more sense than what happened. Holy Shit.

[Venneh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sitting on this about one sleep away from having read this, and honestly, I still can't tell if our author was trying to be darkly satirical about young girls and their bodies here, or if she just tried to pull off a book of full on fatphobia and telling me how fucking disgusting I am while trying to throw some kind of edgy meaning to the whole thing with the ending. This book made me viscerally angry, but not in the way I really think the author was intending me to be. IDK. I'm going to try to come back to how I feel about this later, because the fact that it's pissing me off this much does mean it's pushing at something I don't like, but I can't tell if that pushing is just that of an ozempic faced ghoul making fun of the fatty, or if there's actually something the narrative wants to say.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went in expecting a strange story with a poignant message and dark humour. It was certainly strange, but in the end I found it more sad than anything else.

I enjoyed the unhinged, delusional vibes, which intensified as the main character grew up, building towards an ending I never could have predicted. Something about this reminded me of Zola by D.E. McCluskey. That book has haunted me for a long time, and I imagine this one will too.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Andy Weston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disturbing throughout.

It begins in a compelling way, as a satirical horror. The protagonist and narrator of this difficult and clumsy book is 22 pounds at birth and just keeps growing. Her mother abandons her, and her father is intent on feeding her, as he believes she is two, and that she devoured her twin in the uterus.

But in its second half it all becomes too much, and in ways that undermine the author’s core message.
It is less a novel in the usual form, rather an extended tirade with narrative digressions.

[Adsaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je ne m'attendais pas à cette fin...

[axelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

a very special experience.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short French novel in translation is strange, disturbing, and moving in equal measure—it’s narrated by a teenage girl grappling with her mother’s abandonment, her father’s all-consuming (literally) love, and the merciless bullying of her classmates. Convinced that she devoured her twin in the womb and drove her mother away because of her voracious hunger, she relentlessly feeds her grief, shame, and desperate need for acceptance with the help of her chef father (who copes by referring to her as two people). Devi’s exquisite prose ferries us through the nightmare realm of being other in a society that insists we conform, and the finale is unforgettably arresting.

[Sophie Torris · Rating 4 out of 5]

À la naissance, elle pèse déjà 10 monstrueux kilos, ce qui fait fuir sa mère. Elle est donc élevée par son père, excellent cuisinier, aux p'tits soins de son appétit gargantuesque et qui l'appelle "mes chéries", excusant son obésité par le fait qu'elle ait mangé, in-utéro, sa jumelle. Son enfance est marquée par le rejet, les rires moqueurs et les quolibets des enfants de son âge auxquels la société a déjà inculqué le culte de la minceur et qui la surnomment "la Couenne". Mais elle ne peut que céder à cette faim débridée et à 16 ans, l'adolescente aux bourrelets himalayesques ne quitte plus sa chambre, gavée par ce père bourreau dans tout son dévouement à la rassasier. Elle y découvre pourtant l'amour dans toute son abondante sensualité. C'est une fable dont les mots sont tout aussi savoureux que les mets que cette ogresse truculente ingurgite. Je l'ai dévoré ce petit livre qui condamne la tyrannie des hommes quand elle s'aiguise, sans modération, contre l'autre. Il est aussi question de cyber-harcèlement. C'est un miroir qui nous est tendu, à peine déformant et ça fait mal!

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Novella was beautifully written! I was an awe of the description and Prose used, utterly visceral and grotesque. It explores the lack of empathy within our society that is so focused on body image that it leads to the dehumanization of the people who do not fit within its expectations. It comments on humanities tendency to harm instead of help and the collective fear and need to shame those hurt by our ever rampant and destructive consumerism. The characterization of the father with his harmful delusions, denial and his refusal to se his daughter as she really is filled me with hot rage! Overall this is a stunning and horrific portrayal of a Teenage girl who just wants to be accepted in a world that refuses to see her as anything but a monster.

[Carnet-Plume · Rating 2 out of 5]

J'étais donc persuadée de tomber dans le mille avec cette lecture mais dès les premières pages, la noirceur que dégage ce livre m'a glacé le sang. du début à la fin, nous nous retrouvons face à de l'autoflagellation. le personnage principal ne se fait que des reproches et encore des reproches, sur son corps, sa personnalité, la vie… C'en est à devenir dépressif… ! C'est certainement voulu par l'auteur mais je pense qu'un peu de positif aurait fait du bien à ce roman.
Le harcèlement scolaire, la haine sur les réseaux sociaux sont bien traités, on ressent très bien son désarroi face au harcèlement qu'elle subit au quotidien. Mais cela développe en elle une haine inconsidérée sur les personnes de corpulence « normale ». Les jugements corporels m'ont énormément dérangés, qu'une personne soit maigre ou ronde, les jugements ne sont pas les bienvenus, cela va dans les deux sens…
Le seul point positif est le style d'écriture de l'auteur, je l'ai trouvé très bien écrit, certains paragraphes sont très beaux. Mais encore une fois, le côté glacial est perturbant. Je n'avais qu'une seule envie : fermer ce livre avant de finir complètement déprimée… !
Pour résumé, ce n'est pas un livre que je vous recommanderai… les différents messages que cherche à faire passer l'auteur sont très bons mais cela n'a pas du tout fonctionné sur moi, bien au contraire, cette lecture m'a agacée…

[lit._.for_life_ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for letting me read All Flesh by Ananda Devi.

This book follows an unnamed narrator, who was born a very big baby, and her father is convinced it’s because she absorbed her twin, and now she has to live for two people. This results in the father feeding her more and more, and her getting bigger and bigger.

This book got worse the more I read. Initially, I found it quite interesting and the way the narrator was written was with empathy and understanding, and I could clearly see that Devi was criticising overconsumption in our society through the sin of gluttony. Then, the further in I got, the more prejudice was shown. It was like a lid had come off, and all the fat phobia just kept coming at me. The inherent fat phobia in the messaging became clear as Devi associates obesity with gluttony=overconsumption=bad, without considering any nuances.

This is a teenager. Most of the book takes place when she is 13-16 years old. Why on earth is the twist that a man like 20 years older than her wants to fuck her and she thinks it’s absolutely amazing. She is a fucking kid. I understand that you choose certain characters to communicate your view of society, but you also have to remove yourself from your message and look at what you are actually writing.
A kid has been force-fed by her father her whole life, she hates herself but also takes pleasure in it, a 30+ year old wants to fuck her, and then the ending which is actually diabolical. Choosing to have a child be the narrator, but then never have her actually act and think like a child, was also a weird choice. I feel like Devi chose her to be a child specifically to try and avoid engaging with the topic of obesity in a more complex way than just overeating=fat=overconsumption=bad.

Overall, not a book I would ever read again, or recommend. I think you can find books that tackle this issue way better.

[trixie ⋆⭒˚.⋆ · Rating 2 out of 5]

All Flesh follows a morbidly obese teenage girl’s struggles with her physical condition and society’s fatphobic norms. After consuming her twin in utero, she is born as an overweight baby with an insatiable appetite, which is only reinforced by the way she is treated and force-fed by her father as if she embodies both daughters.

This is a character-driven novel that explores the abuse this girl endures and the debilitating reality of having such a large body. Written in a “stream of consciousness” style of writing, the author brings you into the character’s mind and her constant obsession with being a “lardass” as she continually refers to herself as.

What definitely stood out to me in this novel was the author’s writing style, as it was very poetic and literary, intimately portraying the character’s spiraling inner world, as well as delivering some poignant commentary on society’s view of bodies.

However, I found this book to be overly repetitive and graphic only for the sake of “shock value”. The grotesque way the author describes the teenager’s appetite and eating habits felt too pornographic at times and it drew me away from the book. Later on she establishes a relationship that felt too normalized and I wish there was some commentary on the vile intentions behind that character’s actions.

Definitely a book you should check for triggers warnings.

Thank you to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for the ARC!