Her body’s consumption of space is in stark contrast to the frailty of the narrator. Until, one day, Rachel’s routine is rudely disrupted: in the place of her regular yogurt server stands the voluptuous, over-familiar, disorganised Miriam. She eats at set times, counts calories to the unit, visits the same shops each day, and finishes in the gym after five, finding bliss in the banality. Her abandonment of her Jewish orthodoxy could go unnoticed as her disordered eating habits are similarly ritualistic, her food sacred. Never able to earn the parental approval she craves, following advice from her therapist, Rachel’s particularly toxic relationship with her mother is put on hold at the start of the novel, forcing the narrator to navigate life without living at her constant beck and call.įollowing Broder’s fast-paced and in-your-face style, we watch lapsed-Jew Rachel engage in her new ‘religion’ its higher power not a god, but the mastery of one’s body. Her persistent inner voice permeates all facets of her life, difficult to distinguish from her own mother’s berating that ‘thinner is better’. The theme of pleasure woven throughout offers readers an easy, and enticing, way in.Ī slim, attractive woman who appears to have her life in check, Rachel secretly exists as a submissive to the unwaveringly restrictive control of her eating disorder.

Broder’s straightforward writing style encapsulates the complexities of modern life: the entanglement of mental illness with self-image, the jarring of same-sex love with orthodox religion. Melissa Broder’s newest novel is a thirst-quenching mix of love, loneliness, sex, and insatiable appetites. A tale of paradoxes from start to finish, Milk Fed is a whirlwind of energy.

Melissa broder milk fed