Melissa Broder

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Then Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox Jewish woman 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, Melissa Broder tells a tale of appetites: of physical hunger, of sexual desire, of spiritual longing. 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.

Milk Fed

A Most-Anticipated Selection by Vogue * Refinery29 * Vulture * BuzzFeed * Harper’s Bazaar * O, The Oprah Magazine * The Millions * Literary Hub * The Rumpus * Publishers Weekly and more 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.

A Novel

Everything in the world is wrong, but at least there's chapter 78 in Milk Fed

Iara Ferreira Figueira

“Daughter daughter daughter daughter daughter,” I heard myself saying, roughly from a place in my throat just below my Adam’s apple.

“Daughter daughter daughter daughter daughter daughter daughter,” I said again, and found that I had put my arms around myself.

I sat down on the wood floor and began to rock myself. Then I moved over to the sofa, because it was softer, and rocked myself there.

“I’m so sorry, daughter,” I said, tears in my eyes. “I’m sorry that you felt I had abandoned you.”

“That is okay, Mother,” I said. “You were always here. I just didn’t know how to find you.”

I heard myself talking to myself. I wondered if I had finally lost it.

“Daughter daughter daughter daughter daughter,” I said.

“Yes, Mother,” I said. “Promise me you will never disappear from me again. Show me how I can always know you’re here. Show me how to share my joy with you, that you will be happy to receive it.”

“Oh, my daughter,” I said. “You will forget that I am here. This is the way of human beings, to forget. But you found your way back to me once and so can find your way back again, because I am always here. The world will hurt you again and again. You will hurt yourself again and again. And when it does, and when you do, you will remember me again and again. You will drop to your knees. You will hold yourself. You will be your own daughter again.”

Then I cried. More than anything, all I’d ever wanted was a total embrace, the embrace of an infinite mother, absolute and divine. I wanted to lose the edges of myself and blend with a woman, enter the amniotic sac and melt away. I wanted a love that was bottomless, unconditional, with zero repercussions. I wanted an infinite yogurt, a mystical and maternal yogurt, something of which I could have unlimited quantities that would not hurt me.

But nothing was unlimited. Every cup had a bottom. Miriam and I were done. Certainly, my time in the womb had ended, harsh and abrupt in the cold hospital, bright light, a stranger’s pair of hands, searing consciousness. The woman who had carried me inside her for nine months had become a stranger. Even those women whose mothers loved them unconditionally, that love too had an end.

Still I wanted it. I wanted a love contingent on nothing finite. I wanted a love without end. Everyone was always saying you had to give it to yourself. Self-love, self-love. What did that even mean?

Dr. Mahjoub said it all the time: Mother yourself, parent yourself.

It seemed impossible. I had no idea how to be a mom, let alone my own mother. But what about daughterhood? Was it possible that I could be my own daughter?

This seemed more doable. I wondered if the universe, in its roundness, somehow already contained my daughterness. Perhaps I’d been being held there, a daughter all along, until I woke up to it. If I could not be my own mother—or at least not the kind of mother worth having—then maybe I could be my own daughter.

Original and perverse. Disgusting, erotic, lustful, all of which become compliments in this book. Desire is the topic at hand, self acceptance proves to be the way to approach it. All this used to explore themes like disordered eating, complicated or toxic mother-daughter relationships, sexuality, sexism, religion as culture, superficially supportive workplace or therapy settings and accepting things for what they are. It feels like an easy read but it's rife with motifs, allegories and metaphors, and there's definitely no shortage of underlinable quotes. It's not for everyone, but it's definitely for me.

was sooo fucken weirded out by the mommy issues that i liked it so much. lmfao i mean what’s art if not provocative RIGHT (also read this way back 2023)

Had me thinking about my relation to my mother and how in my twenties I distanced from her, looked for other “motherly” role models and came to the understanding that I can and have to mother myself in the end to become an adult.

Roxana

Schroeter Noémie

petrina

Linara K.S

Direct. Crude. And strangely alright. I didn't find myself hating or loving this.
It took an unexpected turn halfway through the book and I just dont know how to feel about that particular plot point.

yousr abu sboulah

Erin G.

@MorganMPage's review sums this up better than I can: 'a funny, horny, eating disorder novel'. I listened on audio and can also add that I wish the author had opted for a professional narrator.

Ryan Mateyk

can you say mommy issues!?!? 

after the pisces, i had really high expectations for this and unfortunately, it came nowhere near meeting them :( i enjoyed this and broder's writing is great as ever (she really is great!), but the story was kind of flat and repetitive to me. pisces supremacy remains!

armoni mayes

i would give this about 4.5 stars. I did think it was hilarious at times but i wasn’t completely in love with the main character Rachel. I do wish this novel was a little shorter because it did feel like it was dragging on at times but i did appreciate the short chapters!

This darkly hilarious and “delicious new novel that ravishes with sex and food” (The Boston Globe) from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today is a “precise blend of desire, discomfort, spirituality, and existential ache” (BuzzFeed). Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, through 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. Rachel soon 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. “A ruthless, laugh-out-loud examination of life under the tyranny of diet culture” (Glamour) Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is “riotously funny and perfectly profane” (Refinery 29) from “a wild, wicked mind” (Los Angeles Times).

Malia

trigger warning for this book: serious eating disorder, body dysmorphia, fatphobia, body shaming, a bit of homophobia and religious bigotry.

our mc is rachel, who has unhealthy eating habits and no plans for her life. her mother has serious fatphobia and their relationship is rocky enough to the point when rachel's therapist told rachel to do a communication detox with her mother, she obliged. in the midst of everything, rachel found miriam—a total opposite of rachel. rachel is thin, miriam is gloriously fat. rachel is barely jewish, miriam is a modern orthodox. we follow them as their dynamic escalates, as soon as rachel becomes gradually more obsessed with miriam.

premisnya interesting banget tapi... kayaknya broder disini bites more than the story can chew? fokus ceritanya berubah-ubah tanpa penyelesaian yang memuaskan, yang bikin aku jadi less emotionally attached with the whole thing.

SAYANG BANGET padahal habis baca the pisces aku rasanya kayak apapun yang broder tulis AKU HARUS BACA tapi ternyata yang ini rada underwhelming..... sedi. kayanya aku bakalan balik baca the pisces aja. :| tapi selain itu sih broder masih mempertahankan gaya nulisnya yang khas banget itu. the completely unapologetically crass way she talks about things that usually indescribable to me tu gila gw pengen jungkir balik aja rasanya ya Allah gusti.

though i know a certain special someone who would probably find a lot of herself in this book (and that shed probably enjoy it more than i do) im sad to say that UGHHHhHH i wish this book couldve been better....... all in all still ok i guess ga nyesel si bacanya aku bakal tetep baca ulang buat menyerap cara nulisnya aha.

Claudia Beneyto

i’m sure this book is not for everybody, but if it has a specific public that’s definitely me

Weird and funny and sad. Kind of like an otessa moshfegh book but better. I preferred The Pisces though! 

Allegrachatterjee

Kendall McClain

Conflicted on this one, I think I love it but the ending left every issue discussed practically unresolved!

esperanza 

jayla

<spoiler>i have simply never read the smell of shit described as romantic</spoiler>

Jenna Whitlow

** spoiler alert **
           2 out of 5 stars. ⭑⭑

Yikes. So I looked at some critical reviews of this book and thought "wow they're being pretty harsh. surely it's not that bad." But no, it really is. I honestly wouldn't recommend this book, even if the premise interests you, because Broder does such a poor job of addressing the intersection of religion, disordered eating, and mommy issues that I don't even think it's worth it to give it a shot.

Let's get this over with so I can stop thinking about this book: Rachel is a horribly unlikable protagonist. This would be fine, because sometimes unlikable protags are interesting, but the book doesn't seem to condemn her blatant fetishization of the "love interest", Miriam, nor does it truly delve into her weird mommy issues enough to make it a compelling part of her character. Rachel openly admits to viewing Miriam as a "golem" (as in a golem from Jewish mythology. Both Miriam and Rachel are Jewish) and trying to change Miriam to make her more palatable. The entire book regards Miriam with both disgust and overt sexualization and fetisization. It's not the poor sex scenes or the unnecessarily detailed descriptions of food, but the complete disrespect shown to a fat, queer, Jewish character that could have, when written by a better ally to fat people, or a fat person themself, been really interesting. I think the book was TRYING to show the differences between Rachel and Miriam and their relationships with food, Judaism, and their mothers, but this comparison just shit on Miriam instead of actually making Rachel face her harmful thought patterns and actions.

I really wish the core of the book had been Rachel's relationship with her mother instead of the "romance." What resolution did Rachel get with her mom? What growth did they have in their relationship? The no-contact period Rachel enters in at the beginning of the book just eliminates the most interesting conflict that the story had going for it. 

Anything good about this book? It was a quick read, but part of the reason it was quick was because I felt like I needed to skim over parts that were overly-grotesque in either their sexual content or their fatphobia. Definitely the kind of book you could binge in a day, whether you like it or not, like I did. The writing was fine, I guess. I wanted to get some fro-yo after finishing it. That's about it. Don't waste your time.

Jule

It‘s a passionate no from me. Blame it on the audiobook it it makes you feel better. 

smh

Review to come.

Hannah Yang

Hmm. 'contemporary' is the word that comes to mind - I felt like I wasn't the target audience for Milk Fed (but I also feel like really good books should have something for everyone). I also typically don't read smutty books so I didn't enjoy that here, but I do think it makes sense in the context of a book rooted in navigating so many desires.

This book deals with some interesting subjects, with a Jewish, bisexual main character who is navigating different relationships with women in her life. There is a lot of ED content, and I felt like it was used truthfully - that is, there's no grand recovery arc but the events in her life influence her habits and attitude towards food in a realistic and resonant way. Her relationship with Ana (cheeky character naming) was particularly well-written and compelling - the desire for motherly approval and/or merger, the competition, the gauging, the desire to be nothing alike. girlhood fr.

I'm not sure what we're meant to be left with and I think some subjects this book tries to explore do not receive the attention they merit (ex: Israel-Palestine conflict is just ? discussed over a dinner conversation? there is a bit of feminism/anger at patriarchy in Hollywood kind of thrown in at the end?) but overall Milk Fed is a quick/easy read that I could see appealing to others.

lesbian jews, the romance story I never knew i needed. threaded with mommy issues and disordered reading. read only if you have a therapist on call 

Kendall Lobdell

hate to say it but it was a little too weird for me. the ending also felt abrupt so didn’t love it either. also tw: eating disorder 

Tori Albin

Lamia Hajani

I may be one of the few people who did not read The Pisces before reading Milk Fed, so I experienced Broder's writing for the first time in reading this novel. Rachel, a Reform Jew who struggles with an eating disorder, lives in Los Angeles and works for a talent agency. In the midst of "detoxing" from her mother, she meets Miriam, and Orthodox Jew heiress to a froyo shop. Miriam is fat, and that is almost fetishized by Rachel throughout the novel. They become friends and start hooking up and eating together. Rachel begins to eat nonstop throughout the novel, relearning to love food the way she used to before the words of her mother instilled in her the process of being less.

I struggled with an eating disorder in my late teens and early twenties. I still live with disordered thoughts around eating and my weight. So, at first, Milk Fed was both triggering and relatable. I really thought, "This book gets me." But then as the novel progresses, the depiction of Rachel's eating disorder becomes a caricature. That is my least favorite part of the book.

Onto the positive, though; the queer romance is good. The junction between religion and being queer and choosing between one or the other is addressed beautifully. The writing is well-done. There is a lot of sex and sexually explicit thoughts. At times, I felt like I was reading a smut novel! But all in all, Milk Fed was good. It spoke to me in a lot of ways, and I suspect it will speak to a lot of queer women, women with eating disorders, women with mothers.

Thank you to NetGalley, Melissa Broder, and Scribner for allowing me to read this as an advanced reader copy.

Milk Fed

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