Review: Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Review: Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

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Audiobook, Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, libro.fm, melissa broder, milk fed, Reviews, simon schuster audio

Milk Fed 

by Melissa Broder

Thank you Simon Schuster Audio & Libro.fm for this copy.

Publisher: Simon Schuster Audio
Publish Date: February 2, 2021
Audiobook
6 hrs 48 minutes
Standalone
Genres: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+

A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today.

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.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane. 

My Review:

I don't know why I thought this was a memoir at first. 🤣

Broder puts us right into Rachel's blunt, obsessive and horny head and her voice is LOUD.  As a loud person myself, I absolutely appreciate this.  What I related to the most was how she constantly played out scenes in her head, the obsessive personality, the insecurities we all face in one way or another and how the smallest word or phrase could change the mood in an instant.  I HEAR YOU, RACHEL.  However, I did feel like things were SOOOO repetitive.  Now, I'm sure this was intentional as this is what obsession looks like, but it wore on me after a while.  And while I'm not opposed to the word 'pussy', I'm so over hearing it.  There are about a zillion other words for pussy and yet this was the word thrown out over and over and over again. Make it stopppppppppp.

To be quite honest, I think had I not listened to this on audio, I probably would have DNF'd it.  I didn't find it particularly funny and almost quit early on... but I decided to stick with it and grew to find myself involved.  Those scenes where Rachel is first meeting Miriam was so frustrating because as a picky eater, I do NOT like when people question why I do or don't do something with my food. Like, just let me do what I want please and not pressure me into sprinkles or some shit, ya know? Again, I hear you, Rachel.

I truly wanted to like this more than I did.  I loved the bluntness and raw whatever that was being put across but most of the time I felt myself cringing and happy when it finally ended.  Eep.

★★

Audiobook, Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, libro.fm, melissa broder, milk fed, Reviews, simon schuster audio

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