Name: You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
ISBN: 9780008210854

Alexandra Kleeman

‘An existential thriller written in prose that points the way to the future’ Zadie Smith

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

A woman known only as A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, C, who wants her to join him on a reality dating show called That's My Partner! A eats mostly popsicles and oranges, watches endless amounts of television, often just for the commercials— particularly the recurring cartoon escapades of Kandy Kat, the mascot for an entirely chemical dessert—and models herself on a standard of beauty that exists only in such advertising. She fixates on the fifteen minutes of fame a local celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up a Wally's Supermarket's entire, and increasingly ample, supply of veal. Meanwhile, B is attempting to make herself a twin of A, who in turn hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C's pornography addiction. Maybe something like what's gotten into her neighbors across the street, the family who's begun "ghosting" themselves beneath white sheets and whose garage door features a strange scrawl of graffiti: he who sits next to me, may we eat as one. An intelligent and madly entertaining novel reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, White Noise, and City of Glass, Alexandra Kleeman's unforgettable debut is a missing-person mystery told from the point of view of the missing person; an American horror story that concerns sex and friendship, consumption and appetite, faith and transformation, real food and reality television; and, above all, a wholly singular vision of modern womanhood by a frightening, "stunning" (Conjunctions), and often very funny voice of a new generation.

A Novel

Meghan Navoy

Really wanted to like this but had to abandon after 100 pages

Jeff James

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine is a catalog of the mundane made nightmarish and surreal. Eating an orange is a visceral act of destruction and consumption. Applying makeup is an absolute negation of the self.

Sex is dissociative and alien, a study of individual body parts joining and separating in feverish dispassion. Commercials are bizarre tragedies populated with gruesome cartoon imagery.

Your favorite game show ruins lives and breaks up marriages. The neighbors dressed themselves in bed sheets with holes for their eyes and checked out of society to join a new cult. Your roommate wants to become you so thoroughly that you might no longer exist.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine is a bit difficult to summarize in any kind of concise fashion, but the back copy certainly tries. The main thing you need to know before reading it is that it isn’t particularly plot-driven and the characters aren’t much more than archetypes.

The first three-fourths are an episodic, anxious meditation on body image, consumerism and food issues. The last quarter changes gears a bit when the main character decides she has found a solution to her general malaise, and the book loses a bit of its odd, surrealist charm. That last quarter also suffers from a sudden influx of jargon, but the end still mostly sticks the landing.

My favorite parts were Kleeman’s descriptions of terrifying commercials for a chemical-filled brand of snack cakes. Imagine an existentialist Wile E Coyote who doesn’t just fall but breaks at a spiritual level thanks to the machinations of sentient dessert, and you’ve got the general idea.

I also appreciated the author’s horrifying descriptions of food and eating even as they made me cringe. Eating is basically never pleasurable in this book; instead, it’s an act of violence against both food and eater.

I’m honestly not entirely sure why I enjoyed this book as much as I did. I’m not usually patient enough to read weird, arty books, and it was definitely a bit pretentious and overwritten. It’s possible that listening to the audiobook was a big part of why I liked it; in fact, I’m pretty sure I would have gotten bogged down trying to read it in print.

Accordingly, I’d rate this one as a qualified recommendation. If a rambling, slim story about body image and food issues sounds like it might be worth your time, you’ll probably get a few laughs and/or shudders out of Kleeman’s début.

Maggie Gordon

I... don't really know what to feel about Kleeman's debut novel. It feels very laden with symbolism that I haven't fully parsed out. It is certainly not a bad story, but it isn't one that I am particularly fond of. The writing is careful and complex, but the continuous melancholy and angst were a bit grating. The world, however, was an interesting one. I enjoyed the strange mixture of a modern feeling world that was also quite nostalgic. I shall see what I think after my book club discussed the story.

Arden Kowalski

Deriving meaning from this novel must be like trying to gain sustenance from its own Kandy Kakes: an exercise in futility. 

I assume this novel means to tell us something about society, although it attempts for many underdeveloped messages rather than a singular clear one. Is the narrator's alienation from her own face a comment on the beauty industry? The intentionally confusing grocery stores an inditement of consumerism? The Eaters a reflection on religious zeal taken too far? And, of course, the Kandy Kakes; are they a rebuke of advertising or a condemnation of the fast food industry? All of these things could theoretically be true, and yet I'm unable to take any of these thoughts from the novel in its current condition.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine is a disjointed and ineffective social commentary that lacks the teeth to truly satirize. It exists in some strange, non corporeal version of fiction in which nothing meaningful is necessary except the appearance of occurrence. What these books end up inspiring in their readers is a sick, empty feeling of grey-ness, an inability to connect with the story or the characters at a meaningful level. Characters, messaging, and plot alike are sacrificed on the altar of arrayed disturbing incidents destined to be worshipped only at an entry-level creative writing course.

That being said, Alexandra Kleeman is not necessarily an untalented writer. She is able to effectively conjure images of the grotesque, and several lines in the novel betray a brilliant comprehension of the human condition. The reason this novel gets a two star rating is for the moments in which she reminded me of Ottessa Moshfegh or Sally Rooney; their unlikeable female protagonists finding a theoretically meaningful mirror in A. Unfortunately, this novel is a slog because its protagonist is underdeveloped, uninteresting, and does not inspire half the interest that Marianne Sheridan and Eileen do. Worse, the character is not underdeveloped and uninteresting as a means to an end, it simply occurs because the author wanted to write a complex woman without putting in the effort.

In conclusion, this is a painfully monotone book that I thoroughly disliked. It's not terrible enough to have a strong dislike for, it's just ridiculously boring. I would recommend reading literally anything else Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, The New Me by Halle Butler, or Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney if you want to have a pleasant afternoon.

 Bruna Acioly Leão

This is probably the weirdest book I have ever read.

Brook

Conceptually this book was interesting, but the constant ED stuff was hard to get through. The close-in narration of A was also sadly claustrophobic. I appreciate the narrative, but don't think I'd recommend the book generally.

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erin alise 

Lindy

Amulya Garimella

ananya

Nicholas Barnard

Karis Ryu

Crystal L

Maria Flowers

'An existential thriller written in prose that points the way to the future' Zadie Smith 'Fight Club for girls' Vogue A lives with B. B seems to be becoming more and more like A. If A's boyfriend, C, likes A because A is A, but now B is the same as A, where does that leave A? And what has happened to the family across the street, who left one afternoon out of nowhere, covered in sheets with holes cut out for the eyes? 'Comical, malignant and addictive' Adam Thirlwell 'As good a debut as I've ever read' Zadie Smith 'This book will unsettle you; this book will make you feel intensely alive' Buzzfeed

Iris Emily

Katie Chua

Mark Wadley

An intelligent and madly entertaining debut novel reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, White Noise, and City of Glass that is at once a missing-person mystery, an exorcism of modern culture, and a wholly singular vision of contemporary womanhood from a terrifying and often funny voice of a new generation. A woman known only by the letter A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, C, who wants her to join him on a reality show called That’s My Partner! A eats (or doesn’t) the right things, watches endless amounts of television, often just for the commercials—particularly the recurring cartoon escapades of Kandy Kat, the mascot for an entirely chemical dessert—and models herself on a standard of beauty that only exists in such advertising. She fixates on the fifteen minutes of fame a news-celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up his local Wally Supermarket’s entire, and increasingly ample, supply of veal. Meanwhile B is attempting to make herself a twin of A, who hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C’s pornography addiction, and becomes indoctrinated by a new religion spread throughout a web of corporate franchises, which moves her closer to the decoys that populate her television world, but no closer to her true nature.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

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