Mleko i głód

by Melissa Broder, Kaja Gucio (Translator)

Rachel, młoda Żydówka, nie wierzy w żadnego Boga. To jedzenie daje jej ukojenie i pocieszenie, zaspokaja potrzebę rytuału. Na pamięć zna liczbę kalorii ulubionego batonika, a wolny czas upływa jej na fantazjach o potrawach, których nie je ze strachu przed dodatkowymi kilogramami i utratą kontroli.

W to uporządkowane, pełne nakazów i zakazów życie wkracza ortodoksyjna Żydówka Miriam. Rachel z zaskoczeniem odkrywa, że to właśnie ona, mimo dużej nadwagi i – zdawałoby się – krępujących więzów wiary, potrafi czerpać przyjemność z ciała. Jest pewna siebie, nie odmawia sobie jedzenia ani alkoholu, pali papierosy. Ma tylko jedną, najważniejszą zasadę, której nie wolno jej złamać: nie może związać się z kobietą.

Mleko i głód to prowokacyjna, odważna powieść o naszych pragnieniach i potrzebach. Melissa Broder bezpruderyjnie pisze o pożądaniu, apetycie i seksie, całość doprawiając sarkazmem i licznymi odniesieniami do kultury i religii. To także ważny głos we wciąż aktualnej dyskusji o kobiecych ciałach, zmieniającym się kanonie piękna i o tym, ile jesteśmy w stanie poświęcić, by czuć się akceptowani przez otoczenie.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, Contemporary, LGBT, Romance, Literary Fiction, Lesbian

336 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 2021

About the author

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems and LAST SEXT.

Her books have been translated in over ten languages.

She lives in Los Angeles.

www.melissabroder.com

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

to be a woman is to hunger, am i right!!!

i think being a young woman is being marked by desire and by lack. the hunger for these mutually exclusive things defines the experience of growing up as a girl, to me...

it's for this reason that i never tire of reading about eating disorders and academic validation, body dysmorphia and a craving for approval that defines the self.

the dynamics between these are what femininity is to me.

plus: mommy issues representation!!!

anyway. enough pretentiousness - this book is very gross and very funny and not for everyone. it's a little heavy handed with the satire and the smut, and definitely gives itself permission for decadent overindulgence...

but i like that about it.

bottom line: is there anything more endlessly fascinating than womanhood!!

------------------
tbr review

sometimes i like to read like i'm a model posting an instagram story

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty good.

[mina reads™️ · Rating 1 out of 5]

so deeply and unnecessarily disgusting that it clouded all of the genuinely interesting explorations of disordered eating, queer desire and the mc's toxic relationship with her mother

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book probably isn’t for everyone…but it’s for me

[claud · Rating 1 out of 5]

rip freud you would’ve loved this

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jewish bisexual women with extreme mommy issues, disordered eating, working in Hollywood.. this was the perfect kinda gross millennial angsty fiction I love

[ALet · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first it was captivating, but as the story progressed it has become less and less interesting. The topics in this book were generally well thought out, but the story just simply felt a little bit too rush and surface level. For me the story was just simply too short to explore everything it tried to do.

[Barbie* · Rating 1 out of 5]

I... did not love this book. It's described as "scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative" in its blurb, but it's really not.

Was it funny? Ofer's character was somewhat amusing, mostly because I know a few men very much like him--self-absorbed but convinced he's god's gift to wokeness. That's as far as the funny goes for me. And Ofer was a very small part of the story.

Was it erotic? Uh, that depends on your definition. I personally don't find penis envy and MILF-but-it's-your-own-mom fantasies erotic, nor do I find drawn out descriptions of vaginas smelling like fish to be erotic (in my experience as a lesbian, vaginas don't really smell like fish unless something's gone wrong). But if you, like Rachel, have had sex with plus-size/curvy/larger/fat people and put their moles into terms of chocolate as dirty talk, you'll probably find it hot.

Was it imaginative? It's contemporary. It's bland. I'd struggle to call this "imaginative" in any sense of the word.

Honestly, it felt kind of half-finished. Like if you baked a cake but took it out while the center was still raw and sold it at a bakery anyway. I feel like if this had aged longer, been through more revisions, had been told in a different way, it could have been interesting. As it is, the ARC reads like a rough draft (it also has a couple typos, but it's an ARC and I expect typos in all books).

It's listed on Amazon as "LGBT Literary Fiction," so do not make the mistake I made in seeing "LGBT" and "Rachel and Miriam have a relationship" and assume Rachel is not A) bisexual and B) obsessed with male approval. She has sex on-page with a male character (towards the end of the book).

Some of my more subjective interpretations are the very weird approach to same-sex attraction. To me, the constant fantasies about women as her mother and men as sexual beings felt like Rachel being attracted to women at all was just another way the author was attempting to show that she can't be her own mother or something? I don't know. The best way I can put it is that it reads like literary fiction if Freud had a Jewish lesbian fever dream.

[Kayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pro-Palestine bisexual Jewish girl with an eating disorder and mommy issues. So good, a little weird, very sexual, had a great time.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Milk Fed’ won’t be a book for everyone... but I absolutely adored it. I read it in one sitting - not stopping to pee or make tea.

The dialogue was fresh, in your face bold, smart & savvy. Given that Rachel, our protagonist had an eating disorder, I shouldn’t have liked this book at all.... (our daughter was hospitalized five times battling anorexic) ....
so I tend to stay away from the topic today. ( our daughter has been recovered for many years)....

But I loved ‘Milk Fed’.... I laughed ... enjoyed the very crisp writing ...
and well just about everything about it.

I’m sure readers will find fault - roll their eyes- say ‘ooo’ to themselves in parts ... but not me.
Well...it’s raining here today in California-so I may skip my morning walk to sit on our spinnaker stationary bike...
and I ‘might’ say ‘ooo’ when I sit on the bike today ...
given a ‘bike’ description in
Melissa Broder’s book....
or... I’ll probably just giggle to
myself.

Rachel had just been chosen by a low-trafficked entertainment blog as one of 25 young female comics to watch.
When she texted her mother, she wrote, “how did they find you?”

Rachel wasn’t expecting fanfare from her mother, but she thought she would at least be a little bit proud.
Rachel‘s therapist said she should expect nothing.
“It was a phrase you’d associate with a person who didn’t need anything from anyone; a closed system, an automaton. Rachel wanted to be that person.
So, Rachel sent her mother a text saying....
“Hi. I will not be reachable for the next 90 days. Thank you”.
I wondered to myself how big that was going to go over.
Rachel’s mother wrote back immediately: “What are you talking about?”
“Sorry, I replied. Unavailable”.
Then she called.
“I’m detoxing, I said”.
“What do you mean, detoxing?”
“From our relationship, I said it’s emotionally unsafe”.
“What do you mean, emotionally unsafe?”

“This is the thing about boundaries: they made sense in therapy, but when you tried to implement them in the real world, people had no idea what you were talking about”.

From beginning her college career as a theater major at the University of Wisconsin, Rachel, ( not liking theater people), she began her open mic stand up comedy.
After school she moved to Los Angeles where her first job was waitressing at a vegan diner. She learned that she was a terrible waitress and she didn’t have the energy to stand on your feet all day.

Rachel had food rituals to keep herself skinny.
She was also on day 3 of ‘mom-detoxification’.... feeling rather proud of herself.....
ha,
texting her mom in her head…hearing her mothers invisible text words back.

A favorite line:
“I wondered whether there was a deadline for when a person had to finally stop blaming her mother for her own thoughts”.

My goodness- there were so many little things I loved about this book ..
Here’s a rundown of the puzzle pieces ....( you’ll have to put the puzzle pieces together yourself if you read the book);

...Yo!Good frozen yogurt....
...Orthodox boy....
...Zaftig girl...
...Looking both Jewish and not Jewish at the same time....
...Dr. Mahjoub
...Sugar-free, fat free...
...Hunger deprived....
...sprinkles...
...Permission to eat everything in a day...(24 hours of limitless consumption)...
...Savory to break up the other the sweets...
...Mom...
...Dad...
...Jewish voodoo doll/monster: a golem...
...bisexual, lesbian... preferred masturbation to having sex with men...
...”This Show Sucks”...
Ofer...
Ana...
...Miriam Schwebel...
...Jace ( Jason Blagojevich)
... sexual fantasies...
...hand holding...
...sex...
... chain chewing nicotine gum...
...a party with drunk Chassidic men...
...food... lots of variety of food...
...Twizzlers are kosher...
...Shabbos dinner...
... girlfriends...
... squirrels and chipmunks...
...gym workouts...
...movies...
...weight gain...
...kissing...
...therapy...
...Rachel...
...love

“Rachel‘s mother ate shrimp, ignored Shabbat and hadn’t been in a synagogue since Rachele‘s bat mitzvah. She referred to Orthodox Jews as:
“Oy, those people” ....

“Oy, this book”.....
Outlandishly-enjoyable!!!

Thank you Netgalley, Scriber, and Melissa Broder ( you rock and I’ll read your other books I missed)

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 2 out of 5]

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(heads up: this review contains mentions of eating disorders and body dysmorphia as well as explicit language)

2 ½ stars

While I doubt that Milk Fed will win many awards, I sure hope that it wins the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. It 100% deserves to.

“Was it real freedom? Unlikely. But my rituals kept me skinny, and if happiness could be relegated to one thing alone, skinniness, then one might say I was, in a way, happy.”

Milk Fed follows in the steps of novels such as My Year of Rest and Relaxation (or to name a few others: Pizza Girl, Luster, Exciting Times, Severance, Hysteria, The New Me...and no, this is by no means a comprehensive list). As I've said before in my review for Luster, these books are a hit or miss for me. And at first I thought that Milk Fed was a definite hit but after the 30% mark the novel became increasingly repetitive, annoyingly self-indulgent, and ludicrously sensationalistic. To me, Milk Fed reads like a less compelling version of You Exist Too Much. Both novels focus on young bisexual women who have a rather toxic relationship with their mother. They both suffer at one point or another from an eating disorder. They are self-destructive and directionless. Their attempts to seek therapeutic help do not go all that well. The narrator of You Exist Too Much does some fucked up things but ultimately I cared for and sympathised with her. It helped that I found her caustic wit to be genuinely funny. Milk Fed is all style and no substance. Perhaps those who can enjoy this kind of turgid prose may be able to find this novel amusing or insightful but it just reminded of all the reasons why I did not like Susan Choi’s My Education.
Also, fyi, I had an eating disorder. However, I would never describe myself as a ‘survivor’ nor do I believe that you can’t write a dark comedy about eating disorders. I like satire and cringe comedy (Succession and Fleabag are favourites of mine) but I am certainly not a fan of narratives that are solely intent on being as garish and gratuitous as possible.

Our narrator, Rachel, is an aimless twenty-something who in the very opening of the novel informs us that “It didn't matter where I worked: one Hollywood bullshit factory was equal to any other. All that mattered was what I ate, when I ate, and how I ate it”. Rachel thinks about food 24/7. She obsesses about calories, follows seemingly arbitrary eating rituals, exercises everyday not in order to get stronger or leaner but to burn as many calories as possible. She seems to view her troubling relationship to food and her body as preferable to ‘the alternatieve’ (not being ‘skinny’). She goes to therapy, “hoping to alleviate the suffering related to both my food issues and my mother, but without having to make any actual life changes in either area”. During one of these sessions her therapist recommends that Rachel should take a “communication detox” from her mother (suggesting at least 90 days of no contact).

“Do you want to be chubby or do you want boys to like you?”

We learn through brief flashbacks and Rachel’s recounting that one of the reasons why developed an eating disorder is her mother. As a child Rachel’s mother would shame her for eating things she believed were ‘unhealthy’ or ‘bad’ and imposed strict diets on Rachel. Rachel began to binge-eat (in secret), which made her gain weight. To ‘make up’ for it Rachel begins to eat less and less, which sees her becoming anorexic (when she confesses to her mother that she thinks she may be anorexic her mother dismiss this by saying something on the lines of her not being ‘skinny enough’ to be truly anorexic). Rachel’s mother is horrible and she gives the mother from You Exist Too Much a run for her money...but, unlike You Exist Too Much, here we only told bad things about Rachel’s mother. Because of Rachel’s ‘detoxing’ from her, she never makes an appearance in the actual story. Her presence certainly haunts Rachel but I wish she had not been portrayed in such a skewed way. Making someone embody only negative traits is a very easy way of making them unlikable or into the ‘bad guy’.

Rachel doesn’t care about her job ( I cannot precisely remember what she does other than it has to do with ‘Hollywood’) nor does she have any friends or hobbies (unless you count obsessing about food as a hobby). She is desperate for validation, which is perhaps why once a week she does stand up comedy for a night show called ‘This Show Sucks’. This thread of her life often felt unexplored and out of place. You could probably cut out the scenes she spends at this show and the story would be much the same (by the end this show’s main purpose seems to be that of a meeting place).
At work she has sort of bonded with an older woman who she sees both as a mother-figure of sorts and as an object of desire. This leads to some predictably gross incestuous fantasies that have a very Freudian feel to them as they exist mainly to indicate Rachel’s state of mind (and they have the added bonus of grossing the reader out). During one of these sexual fantasies, which goes on and on for quite a few pages, Rachel imagines being ‘mothered’ by this older female colleague. Later, when she begins bingeing again, she imagines having sex with this same colleague, only this time she is the one who is in doing the ‘dominating’.
Rachel’s first meets Miriam at the frozen yogurt shop where she usually gets a plain yogurt from (part of her eating routine). Miriam, who works at this shop, insists on giving Rachel a bigger portion of yogurt. Because of this Rachel is annoyed by Miriam. Added to that is Rachel repulsion towards Miriam’s body (she describes Miriam as being “medically obese”). However, Miriam’s nonchalance towards food and her body soon catch Rachel’s attention. Her initial repulsion gives way to lust, and the two women seem to ‘bond’ over the fact that they are both Jewish (Miriam however, unlike Rachel who does not seem to practice any Jewish rituals and does not believe in God, is Orthodox).
Miriam invites Rachel to her house and Rachel idealises her family and home-life. They all enjoy eating and cooking food, and their meals together are happy occasions.
Rachel believes that Miriam reciprocates her feelings and the two being a very one-way sexual relationship. Things, of course, do not go as planned. Rachel’s ups and downs with food, her self-hatred, her unresolved mummy issues, they all contribute to her self-destructive behaviour.
I probably wouldn’t have minded the book’s switch of focus (from Rachel’s ED to Rachel feelings for Miriam) if the relationship between Rachel and Miriam had not been wholly superficial. Miriam is reduced to the role of sex object. There are many instances were Rachel, and the readers, could have learnt more of her—what kind of person she is, her feelings towards Rachel, the way she sees herself, her future & desires, etc.—but we do not. What we get instead are many scenes about Rachel wanting to have sex with Miriam, obsessing over Miriam’s body, masturbating while thinking of Miriam or that her colleague, having sex with Miriam...the list goes on. The way Rachel’s thinks about Miriam’s body raised a few red flags and her attraction towards her sometimes verged on fetishising. She doesn’t think of Miriam but merely of Miriam’s body. Many of the metaphors used when the two are having sex or when Rachel is fantasising about her are food related (Rachel describes Miriam’s moles as “chocolate drops”, her tongue as a “fat piece of liver she was king enough to feed me”). She also loves watching her eat and is aroused when Miriam “slurp[s] dumplings”. Miriam’s “rolls of fat” are like “pussies” to Rachel. I don’t know...these descriptions were probably meant to be funny and weird but they mostly struck me as affected and cheap.
Most of the sex scenes in this novel were awful. They tried hard to be gritty and real but ended being the opposite: when watching a film with Audrey Hepburn Rachel imagines Audrey’s “concave thighs” and sticking her “mouth in her little pussy”; when she is holding Miriam’s hand she views this as an act of sexual intercourse, her finger is a “a cock, a penetrating object”; some of her fantasies included phrases such as “I activated Frankencock” or “It was like nipples were two clits”; when she is having sex with Miriam she smells “the faintest waft of shit coming up from underneath her. It smelled like fertile heaven: peat moss, soil, sod, loam”. Later in the novel she brags about fingering a guy to that older female colleague in order to impress her, feeling remorse in doing so. She never confronts her mother or this colleague, nor does she feel challenged or inspired by her relationship with Miriam. Yes, the more time she spends with Miriam, the less she restricts but throughout the course of the narrative she maintains an obsessive relationship with food and keeps assigning moralistic values to food. I never believed that she cared for Miriam, nor do I think that the relationship helped her somehow. Miriam...she did not strike me as a fully fleshed character. While her body is described in minute detail, her personality remains largely absent. Often, it seemed that Rachel viewed Miriam’s body as representing her ‘essence’. She likes going to the cinema, she’s Jewish, she seems to care for her family...other than that? Who knows!
Because this is a satire most of the characters exist in order to make fun of a certain type of person: we have Rachel’s manager, a woke ‘dude bro’, her older female colleague who is thin, mean, and enjoys belittling other people’s appearance etc., the famous actor who is kind of full of himself, the not very helpful therapist who sees fake deep things…
The narrative also had a thread involving a golem (Rachel creates it out of putty during one of her therapy sessions) and a series of dreams with Judah Loew ben Bezalel, and, to be perfectly honest, these were my favourite elements of Rachel’s story. Sadly however they do not play a huge role in the plot, and most of the narrative is dedicated to Rachel having sex or thinking about her ‘pussy’. Seriously, there were times when this book brought to mind WAP cause there are a few situations in which Rachel and Miriam would benefit from using a mop.

I would not recommend this to those who have been affected by an ED. Although the author initially seemed to have captured many sentiments that resonated with me, Rachel’s ED is ultimately used as a source of humour. There are many grotesque scenes that serve very little purpose other than ridiculing her. And I’m very over books or films that feature characters who offhandedly remark ‘I tried to go bulimic once but like it didn’t work’ (then again, I had bulimia so I am a bit touchy on that particular front).
Anyway, this novel tries to be outrageous and subversive but it succeeds only in being gratuitous. This is the kind of satire that is all bark, no bite. The author’s commentary on modern work culture, eating disorders, contemporary society, religion, the Palestinian-Israel conflict ...is lacking.
Also, I find it hard to believe that Rachel, our supposedly shrewd girl, and this famous actor would get Frankenstein and Frankenstein's creature confused.

Nevertheless, just because I found Melissa Broder's story to be superficial and ultimately unfunny, does not mean that you should not give this novel a try (bear in mind however that this books has some pretty yucky and incest-y content).
Here is a snippet which I did not enjoy but might very well appeal to other types of readers:

“Her hair was the color of cream soda, or papyrus scrolls streaked with night light. Her eyebrows were the color of lions, lazy ones, dozing in sunlight or eating butter at night with their paws by lantern. Her eyes: icebergs for shipwrecking. Lashes: smoke and platinum. Her skin was the Virgin Mary, also very baby. Her nose: adorable, breathing. Upper lip: pink peony. Lower lip: rose. The teeth were trickier, but her inner mouth was easy–Valentine hearts and hell.”

[Coco Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book felt like therapy for me.

TW it centres around a woman with an ED explores the struggles of a mother-daughter relationship and is VERY explicit in the sex scenes. So if any of those could upset you, do not read!

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This hurts a bit. I was so very sure I would love this (The Pisces is one of my all-time favourite books and I had been anticipating Broder’s second novel for what felt like ages) and while Broder’s writing is as sharp as ever and there is much to love, ultimately this did not always work for me. Where Lucy (the main character in The Pisces) is deeply unpleasant and unhappy but so witty and sharp that I could not help but root for her, here the main character, Rachel, is also prickly but before anything else deeply, deeply unhappy. She looks for acceptance in all the wrong places, trying to be somebody she is not in the hopes of finally finding somebody who unconditionally (or even conditionally) loves her.

For me, Broder’s biggest strength lies in drawing these women that feel real, with internal voices that are consistent and believable. Rachel feels like a complete person – and I felt for her. Her every moment is taken over by her eating disorder, her calorie counting, and her obsessive tendencies – and her aforementioned need to be loved by somebody. Her inner monologue is claustrophobic to the extreme, especially in the very first chapter when she outlines her daily routine. Rachel is without a plan for her life, except to stay as thin as humanly possible by any means necessary, and when she latches on to Miriam, an orthodox Jewish woman who works in the frozen joghurt shop Rachel frequents, the crush quickly becomes unhealthy and obsessive as well. The book was hard on my second hand embarassment and took me a lot longer to finish than it might have otherwise taken me.

All these are not objective criticisms of this book but rather reasons why I did not always enjoy my time with it. Ultimately, this is good and it seems unfair to measure any book against Broder’s debut which kickstarted my love affair with books about disaster women, but I could not help doing so and thus couldn’t love it the way I wanted to love it.

Content warnings: disordered eating, calorie counting, vomit, binge eating, homophobia, self harm, addiction, suicidal ideation, parental abuse

I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.

[Antje ❦ · Rating 3 out of 5]

For all my Ottessa Moshfegh and Eliza Clark girlies💅💅


THIS WAS VERY FREUDIAN! And it was okay, but it didn't wow me. The idea was really nice, but the premise was either missing or underdeveloped and the delivery wasn't anything worth raving about!

Our protagonist is Rachel, a young woman battling her eating disorder (stated as anorexia nervosa in the book, seems more like EDNOS to me), her sexuality, her culture and connection to the Orthodox Jewish community and pretty much every aspect of her personal and professional life.

This book wasn't that short (about 300 pages), but I flew through it! Even though Rachel isn't really meant to be likeable (and that's the aspect of this book that reminded me of Ottessa Moshfegh end Eliza Clark the most), you simply find yourself immersed in her story. Almost every page had me saying OH HOW I LOVE BEING A WOMAN out loud. The "Oral Fixation Freudian theory" was very very prominent in this book and the protagonist has shown pretty much every characteristic of that disorder (don't have a better term for that sorry), Still, I had this constant feeling that something was missing. I'm a huge huge fan of weird books and used to DEVOUR this type of literature, but something about this one didn't really speak to me personally. Some aspects of womanhood in general and all that talk surrounding EDs was indeed heartfelt and relatable, but I still couldn't grasp the purpose of this book. It may sound a bit harsh, but it felt like reading a transcript of my daily activities (it I had an extremely unhinged manic phase).

However, here are some quotes I really liked:

-I felt high on my sacrifice.

This was the thing about boundaries: they made sense in therapy, but when you tried to implement them in the real world, people had no idea what you were talking about.

- Mother yourself, parent yourself.

- Is there some plateau of wellness- some place we are supposed to get to where we are, like, fine forever? Because to me that sounds like death!

- Maybe she was remaking me in her image. Maybe we wereremaking each other.

- They say the perfect is the enemy of the good, that if you strive for perfection you will overlook the good.

TW: THIS BOOK CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF EATING DISORDERS AND BODY DYSMORPHIA and it's very triggering. Consider that before reading, your mental health is a huge priority💕

[Emily B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to read everything of Melissa Broder’s that I can get my hands on. So when I got the ARC for this I was beyond excited! It was everything I could have wanted and more and I ended up reading it in less than a day.

I love the way she writes, it’s not complicated but it’s raw, honest and self aware . She is one of those writers who write things I think and feel but i haven’t been able to put into words myself or express yet.

‘This absence of rejection felt like an embrace’

[Bianca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is painful to write, Milk Fed was one huge disappointment, especially considering I loved Broder's The Pisces.

A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god - such misleading claims. I wasn't amused in the least. The sex, which was over-the-top descriptive, was outright off-putting, and there was nothing imaginative, with the exception of a lot of Freudian incestuous masturbatory weird dreaming and fantasizing.

The main character and narrator of this short novel is Rachel, a twenty-four-year-old lapsed Jew, who works in a talent agency in Hollywood. She's not that keen on the job or her colleagues.
Rachel is obsessed with food, how many calories she eats, how often. She also exercises obsessively. She suffers from body dysmorphia and has an overbearing mother.
Out of nowhere, Rachel develops a crush on Miriam, an obese Orthodox Jew young woman, who works in the yoghurt place Rachel frequents for lunch.
The two develop a friendship and sexual relationship. I thought Miriam was under-developed and mostly there as a sex object. In the second half, there's a lot of lesbian sex. It was repetitive and way too descriptive, which felt like a filler.

The ending was anti-climatic as well.

Worst of all, the writing was simplistic and flat. This is no literary masterpiece, if anything, it felt like a first draft. Truthfully, I found almost no redeeming qualities to this novel, unless being a quick read counts for much.

I've received this eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Danika at The Lesbrary · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some books–very rarely–that I read and form such a personal attachment to that I don’t want to share them with the world. This is one of them. I picked it up based on the fact that it was queer and had a blurb from Carmen Maria Machado; that was about all I knew about it. It turned out to be an immersive, raw, sometimes overwhelming reading experience.

Content warning: Discussion of disordered eating, self-loathing, internalized homophobia.

The main character struggles with her repressed sexuality, her issues with food and her body, and her mother issues, and those all get tangled up in each other–which is my way of trying to tactfully give a content warning for her fantasizing sexually about a (fictional) mother/daughter relationship. She is looking for mother figures in the wrong places, desperately wanting the unconditional love she never received as a child.

This is a darkly comic book that had me highlighting and underlining on almost every page. On her first boyfriend: “I began dating him by default when one night, in his car, he put his hand on my thigh and I was too hungry and tired to deal with moving it. I ended things a few months later, when I got the energy to move it.” Her assessment of her therapist: “She was probably someone who genuinely enjoyed a nice pear.” On approval: “What I wanted most was for this certified hot person to see a hotness in me, thereby verifying, once and for all, that I was hot. It wasn’t that civilians didn’t find me attractive. But for a licensed hot person to verify me? That was the real shit.”

I found myself reading this book compulsively. I fell completely into Rachel’s worldview and couldn’t tear myself away. If you are someone who struggles with disordered eating or body image issues, this isn’t a book to pick up lightly. In a way, I was reading Rachel like Rachel was watching Miriam: as the fear and the secret dream. The idea of being so in control, contained, and thin is attractive–even though I know those thoughts are extremely unhealthy. At the same time, it was a cathartic read. Over the course of the book, Rachel goes from extreme restriction to feeling out of control to discovering something like balance. It’s a book that asks, What is your worst fear of your body? Isn’t that person worthy of love?

This book had me almost in tears several times. I think that many–most?–women fear being out of control, and often feel like they’re right on the precipice of it. This story asks, What happens if you let go? If you fed that hunger until it was appeased? “What do you have to lose?” the Rabbi in her dreams asks.

Full review at the Lesbrary.

[Hayley]

“The heart gets wounded—so what? I thought. I’d seen all the plays. I should have been prepared. Love goes. But what I hadn’t known was how good the love would feel when it was there, like a hymn moving through me all the time.”

a satirical story about an unhappy woman with mommy issues learning to love herself and those around her–my kind of book!

in all seriousness, though, this book really surprised me. i like that it’s supposed to make you uncomfortable so that you can examine that discomfort and lean more into the story. i’ve been seeking out a lot of feminist/women’s literature that focuses on not glorifying the process of seeking love and healing strained familial relationships, and this book delivered on those elements.

milk fed follows a twenty something woman while she struggles to find peace and to understand herself and her surroundings. she is obsessed with calorie restriction and there is a growing distance between herself and her judaism. then she meets another jewish girl and her family (who insist on feeding her) and things change.

what i love about this book is how honest it is. it’s such a raw and real depiction of femininity and sex and queerness, how family dynamics and religion can intensely influence a person, the anxious thoughts that ruin every good moment you have, but you can’t seem to stop them no matter how hard you try because then you feel like you’re intercepting an integral part of your personhood.

nothing in this book is glorified; it’s all encompassing and kind of depraved and tender, and i loved it.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed a lot of the themes in this novel: difficult mother/daughter dynamics, the struggle to recognize and satisfy our desires (e.g., for food, for connection), the invisibility and repression of queerness. Melissa Broder’s prose was as per usual sharp and engaging. The main character struggles with disordered eating and is obsessed with monitoring her food intake. At the same time, I liked reading about her hard-won path toward growth, through setting boundaries, working through her mother-based transference, and doing things that feed her spirit even when they feel hard. One scene in particular that pushed me toward a four-star rating over a three-star one is when Rachel speaks up about Zionism at the dinner table with Miriam’s family, fighting against anti-Palestine ideology, a gusty move and a topic I don’t see featured in fiction too much. I would also highly recommend Post-Traumatic by Chantal Johnson to those who resonate with Milk Fed!

[bella · Rating 1 out of 5]

i felt so disgusted reading this book & the sex scenes, it felt like wlw written by a straight man

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Milk Fed just goes to show that you can love a book and still be incredibly disappointed in it. After I read the first 30%, I was convinced that this was going to be my favorite book of the year. Ultimately it did lose a bit of steam and I can't help but to mourn for the exceptional book that it could have been, but nevertheless, I still enjoyed this so much and recommend it wholehearted to the right reader.

Milk Fed, Broder's sophomore novel following her sensational debut The Pisces, follows Rachel, a lapsed Jewish woman who works at a talent agency in LA and spends every waking hour of her days counting calories and fixating on her diet. Her therapist recommends a detox from her emotionally abusive mother, who Rachel usually calls every day. Mid-detox, she meets Miriam, an Orthodox woman who works at Rachel's local frozen yogurt place, who Rachel becomes fixated on, leading to a breakdown of her carefully constructed food rituals. 

Broder's books are messy, piercing, gritty, and deeply, deeply funny--it's a recipe that works perfectly to my tastes. (Also, if you're familiar with LA and/or into bougie LA culture... her books are such a treat.) Rachel is a character whose head I bizarrely enjoyed inhabiting, in spite of or perhaps because of the sheer level of toxicity. Rachel was so convincing and well-crafted that I felt like I knew her intimately after only a few pages. Melissa Broder really excels at sharp and specific characterization where a lot of books in the 'disaster woman' genre tend to opt for a more 'generic millennial every-woman' approach (which I've certainly seen done well, but which I think I may be a bit burnt out on). Where this book falters is in its introduction of Miriam and her family--the pace slows, the focus shifts, Rachel's behavior becomes slightly less intelligible. Still, while I ultimately felt that Broder could have used a defter hand in editing to get it up to the high standard she set for herself in The Pisces, I honestly loved spending time with this book. It's not for everyone, but if you gravitate toward the slightly fucked up and absurd, you'll probably love this too.

Massive trigger warning for eating disorders. Probably other things too, but that's the big one.

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melissa Broder has a sharp, weird sense of humor and a keen eye for the movements of the human soul, but much like in the case of The Pisces (merman sex, remember?), she tends to shoot herself in the foot by relying on some rather stale motifs that juxtapose the fresh language. This new novel tells the story of Rachel, a 24-year-old lapsed Jew with an eating disorder who works at a talent agency in L.A and does stand-up in her free time. All her life, her mother has been suffocating her with her expectations regarding physical appearance and the need to secure a suitable husband, and Rachel now seeks a mother in other female figures (cliche alarm).

Then, her therapist puts her on a 90-day-detox from her actual mother. Enter Miriam, overweight, heiress to a small frozen yogurt empire and deeply religious. Rachel falls for her, but is stilted by her own problems: Her own and Miriam's Jewish family, her former and new eating habits (one word: feast), her own and Miriam's sexuality and attachment issues, etc. In short: Rachel is lost and seeks herself by mirroring herself and her own needs in those around her, and while she has no bad intentions, her quest is of course doomed. Oh, and there is some fun recurring storyline connected to The Golem that plays with this exact theme (as an aside: the best golem-related book is still CoDex 1962: A Trilogy).

"Milk Fed" shines when Broder finds expressive, sometimes quirky descriptions for dark feelings and psychological tribulations, especially her portrayal of eating disorders is, in all its (apt) repetitiveness, intense and harrowing. Sometimes though, she underestimates her readers: When Miriam tells Rachel a story that very obviously is a thinly veiled description of her own situation, Rachel, who is smart, doesn't seem to get it, and some of Rachel's obsessions with her mother seem a little overblown and textbook Freudian.

But all in all, this is a smart, entertaining book, and Broder remains an unusual, fresh voice that deserves to be read. I'm already curious what she will come up with next. Until then, you can learn more about the book - or rather the translation, Muttermilch - in our latest podcast episode (in German).

[Lotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5. This was very hot and bisexual and I was very into it.

[lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

of course I liked this. it made me quite sad though because I totally get her. need more books about queer women with mommy issues, no particular reason, I just... need it.

[nia · Rating 3 out of 5]

gay book with useful recipes

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this even more than THE PISCES, which I liked very much. It is going to be another love-it-or-hate-it book, with another protagonist who is a constant cringe-fest, who is deeply damaged, who makes so many terrible choices. Ironically my biggest issue with it is it wraps up many of these issues a little too quickly and easily.

Big big big biggest content warnings for disordered eating. Broder goes into extensive detail about Rachel's eating habits and her fears about her body. Content warnings for fatphobia, too, although this one is tricky and more complex. While a fat woman's body is very much celebrated in this book, I can also see how it could feel like objectification, so just keep in mind that this will give you some real complicated feelings about bodies, food, weight, fatness, etc. This is a book where a character goes to real extremes and we don't get a whole lot of these issues presented to us in a comfortable or healthy way.

Rachel has issues. She has a serious eating disorder that she can admit but won't address. The eating disorder comes from a serious fatphobia and dysmorphia that comes from her mother, who seems to care about Rachel being thin more than she cares about anything else. Everything in her life is stalled, she has a job she doesn't care about, she has no real friends or relationships, she is stuck until she can get herself unstuck. At the beginning of the book she takes a big step, she cuts off contact with her mother (temporarily), but when her therapist tries to get her to confront her dysmorphia she runs away from therapy. But the first step ends up sending her in an unexpected direction: into an infatuation with Miriam.

It is clear to us from the moment we meet Miriam that she is more than just a nice woman who works at the yogurt shop. Miriam is the opposite of Rachel. Rachel is barely Jewish, Miriam is modern orthodox. Rachel is a child of divorce who doesn't get along with her parents, Miriam is from a large, loving family. Rachel is obsessed with being thin and calorie counting, Miriam is fat and loves food. As Rachel becomes more and more obsessed with Miriam, it's clear to us that there is more here than just Miriam herself, there is clearly something Rachel is working out through her even if she isn't ready to admit it.

Watching Miriam and Rachel together is both joyous and deeply painful. It is wonderful to see Rachel give herself permission to eat food, to let herself look at Miriam and find her beautiful. But we also know how messed up Rachel is (Miriam definitely doesn't) and as the relationship becomes more romantic, it gets even worse, as Rachel doesn't really respect boundaries Miriam sets, nor does she make an effort to understand how difficult it must be for Miriam to have romantic feelings for a woman in a faith and culture that doesn't accept queer relationships. I really liked how Broder did this, though. She keeps us deep in Rachel's perspective, and while the reader knows this is all likely having a very complicated impact on Miriam, she doesn't pull away from Rachel's bad choices, even if they're slightly less bad than some of her others. I can tell Broder knows Miriam's whole story, all the depths of it she doesn't share with us.

This is, as you've probably already gathered, a book rooted deeply in the physical body. Once again every bodily function is on the page. And I don't remember exactly how much sex was in THE PISCES but I want to say this has a lot more because it has a lot more than any book in recent memory. This book is incredibly horny and it is not socially acceptable. Rachel's fantasies are weird, especially since she cannot really feel things fully in her body as it is so she often imagines herself as being in a different kind of body. I love the way Broder writes sex scenes, even if sometimes it makes me uncomfortable. There is a lack of guile in them, there is no need to impress or make a good show, it is the messy versions of ourselves we keep hidden. Reading this book is a constant reminder of how we never get to see that in other people and how secretly we hold those parts of ourselves.

I was feeling a bit slumpy before reading this, plenty of perfectly good books just were not connecting with me. But Broder is so visceral, so pushy, I absolutely loved it and it was just what I needed. If you didn't like THE PISCES this isn't going to be for you, either. But so many of the messed-up-young-woman books are this love/hate kind of book. The ones I love (this, LUSTER, PIZZA GIRL) and the ones I don't like at all (basically any of them I haven't reviewed because i quit reading them, lol). I think you always have to give them a go to see if they'll work for you but the good news is you will know immediately. I was hooked within the first chapter.

[Sophia Judice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Milk Fed details a woman's journey to build a healthy relationship with food and reclaim her body. I wanted to love this book so badly, but I couldn't connect with it. Melissa Broder's writing is beautiful, albeit slightly unnerving and grotesque, and I enjoyed the brief chapters that made the book feel more fast-paced than it was. Broder writes some keen anecdotes about religion, sexuality, food, maternal relationships, and womanhood, but as a whole, Milk Fed sort of fell flat for me. I found myself largely unable to invest myself in the story, which isn't to say the book isn't well done; it just wasn't for me.

[Jesse On Youtube · Rating 5 out of 5]

Milk Fed made me blush beneath my skin. I listened to the audiobook on my walks with Akasha and often had to stop and glance around to be sure no one had somehow overheard the narrator dictate the delightfully naughty scenes.

Okay, on to the review.

We are following a bisexual Jewish woman with an eating disorder as she falls in love with another jewish woman who is fat. Together, they navigate their mutual crush while being confronted with their pasts and the complexities of their present. It is kinky, sexy, funny (actually it is hilarious), sex positive, fat positive, and just overall a damn good book.

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up.

Thought-provoking and intense, Melissa Broder's new novel, Milk Fed , is a story of one woman’s obsession with her eating habits, as well as a look at sexuality, religion, and relationships.

Rachel has always been fanatical about what she eats. She loves food, but from a young age, her mother ingrained in her a fear of gaining weight and looking fat. Every day is spent longing for delicious delicacies, but she has a regimented meal and exercise plan that she follows obsessively.

When her therapist suggests a 90-day communication “detox” from her mother to help Rachel confront her eating issues, Rachel meets Miriam, a young, zaftig, Orthodox Jewish woman. Miriam’s apparent confidence with her body and her unabashed love of food and eating utterly appeals to Rachel, and it’s not long before she starts eating that way, too.

But old habits die hard, and Rachel finds herself torn between the obsessions deeply ingrained in her psyche and the renewed love for eating she has found with Miriam. She also finds herself completely infatuated with Miriam, both sexually and religiously, and she can’t get enough of her.

Broder is a bold writer, one who goes for broke with every word. Like her previous book, The Pisces , Broder creates intense sex scenes that are graphic, and she also is frank about biological functions and other things. But at the same time, there’s an underlying sensitivity in dealing with the issues Rachel faces, and how she needs help.

As someone who has struggled with my weight since childhood, this book hit me hard in certain ways. I recognize the obsessions, the need to subsist on a wholly unrealistic number of calories, the pressures from family about what I ate and how I looked. (I actually had a great-uncle who used to grab my stomach whenever he'd see me, as if to tell me I was fat. So amusing.) For those who have struggled with eating disorders or food-related issues or anxieties, this book may be a real trigger for you.

Broder is tremendously talented and her books always give you something to think about. Milk Fed is certainly no exception.

Dart Frogg Communications and Scribner Books gave me a complimentary advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!!

Check out my list of the best books I read in 2020 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2020.html.

Check out my list of the best books of the last decade at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-favorite-books-of-decade.html.

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.

Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.

[inciminci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably in the minority here, but seeing all the reviews calling this gross and disgusting, I was actually expecting and excited about shocking and disturbing erotic scenes but it fell short in that department, and there was too much talk about religion, too much heartbreak, even though it started really strong.
So a little disappointed here, but not too much, as it was quirky, fun and somewhat relatable too.