A review by valleybookmama
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

challenging emotional funny reflective
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner Books for the advance copy!

 Rachel is a twenty-something working in Los Angeles, adjacent to the entertainment industry by day and a stand up comedian by night. Her fraught relationship with her controlling mother and her long struggle with body image and disordered eating have consumed her life for many years, but have also allowed her to control and limit the scope of her life in ways that are comforting to her. 
 
Her therapist suggests she “detox” from her mother and cut all communication for ninety days, which sets into motion a series of events, including meeting Miriam, the Orthodox Jewish women who makes her low-calorie frozen yogurt and whose fat body fascinates Rachel and turns her on. Being out from under her mother’s control and her relationship with Miriam, who takes joy in eating, Rachel starts to let herself enjoy indulging in food. Her relationship with Miriam develops as well, as Rachel’s attraction to her is reciprocated. Judaism and the different experiences that Rachel and Miriam have had as Reform and Orthodox, respectively, are central to the narrative, which is refreshing. 
 
Honestly, I’m still thinking about this book and turning it over in my head. What it says about women and food, about bodies, about our relationships with our mothers and all the ways they can damage us when we just want to be fed. Milk Fed made me deeply uncomfortable at many points. Once she’s not longer being controlled by her mother, Rachel is set free to explore her sexuality and live inside her body, and she sure does. This book is explicit and graphic in many ways, about sexuality, about bodies, about disordered eating, and you’re inside the head of someone whose ideas about themselves are so caught up in her relationship with her mother, it’s hard for it not to take a real Freudian turn. But at its core, this is a story about hunger—hunger for food, freedom, love, belonging, themes that are universal. It’s funny, difficult, sexy, uncomfortable, sad, and introspective all at once. I don’t think this is for everyone, but it’s a thoughtful, quirky little book that I think will sit with you for a while. 
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