Add this book to the list of unhinged millennial women novels that have stolen my heart in the past few years. "Unhinged millennial woman" is definitely one of my favorite genres, one in whice I would also catalog Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. I would describe Melissa Broder's writing style as deeply unsettling. This book is uncomfortable. It makes you squirm. But that's the joy of it. Broder gets down to the nitty-gritty that everyone is thinking and no one is saying. This had some really insightful thoughts on eating disorders, mother/daughter relationships, and homophobia within Orthodox Judaism.Publisher's description:
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.