A review by thereadingrambler
The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter

dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Thick and the Lean is set in a world like ours in religion, class, philosophy, and race, but rather than a world that thrives off the repression of sex, the people of this culture take every opportunity to indulge. Instead, the shameful activity is eating. Food is heavily restricted, with most people opting for a liquid-based diet that provides only the bare minimum needed for survival. This is the belief of the ALGN, the dominant people group of this area, but there are two others: the Free-Wah and the Ahinga, two people groups who are oppressed and suffered mightily at the hands of the colonizing ALGN when they arrived hundreds of years before. The Free-Wah and the Ahinga do not ascribe to this restrictive diet religion, although the hegemonic beliefs of the ALGN heavily curtail their food practices. The book's first two parts heavily focus on this religious tension and provide a double layer of critique of contemporary American society. First, there is the critique of diet culture and the pressures for women to continually make themselves smaller physically, vocally, emotionally, mentally, and in so many other ways. Second, while not discounting anyone who suffers from eating disorders, this book also levels a harsh critique of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity’s purity culture. For many, if not most, readers, applying the language of purity culture to food turns the first two parts of the book almost into a satire of purity culture. There’s a poignant scene where one of our main characters, Beatrice, is at a church lock-in (if my reader is not familiar with this practice is very common for teenagers in evangelical churches), which is usually dedicated to teens worshipping and learning about Christian beliefs. The same thing is happening here, but the worship they are engaging is in various sex practices with any number of fellow teenagers. But Beatrice discovers a secret larder in the church kitchen and gets in serious trouble for making a grilled cheese sandwich, just like teens in churches in contemporary America would get in serious trouble for sneaking off to have sex at a real church lock-in.

This brings me to the main characters: Reiko and Beatrice. Reiko is a poor girl raised in the city. The only operative principle of this religion is to become closer to angels rather than humans. Humans can transcend their animality and become more angelic. So this city is built in tiers, with the richest living at the very top and never touching the group. Reiko comes from the lowest part of the city, where the poorest live, mired in dirt. She is also a member of the Free-Wah people and has a rich (if impoverished) food culture. So when she is given a scholarship to a university in the Middle, she experiences extensive culture shock. She thrives in this setting, but her scholarship is ripped away. She can either go into massive debt to continue her education or leave. She picks a third option: a life of crime. Beatrice grows up in Seagate, a strict fundamentalist commune that operates/owns a corporation. All the adults in this commune work for this corporation, primarily interested in developing various supplements and pharmaceuticals that will remove people’s appetites and ability to taste and provide them with all the nutrients they need. Unfortunately, Beatrice is very interested in food. Through clandestine internet chatrooms, she discovers an underground of chefs, recipes, and food, spurring her to flee Seagate for the city where she can (hopefully) pursue her culinary dreams.

That’s the end of part one. In the rest of the book, we follow these two girls as they grow into adulthood and attempt to fulfill their dreams and goals while the world crumbles further around them—more people pushed into poverty to allow those Above (literally) to rise even higher. The stories are told in parallel; the two do not join at some point to become rebels or form a relationship or anything like that. They live their separate lives, allowing the reader to see many different angles of this world and the various impacts of the ALGN's religious (and, therefore, economic) beliefs and practices. Thus, if you are someone primarily motivated by plot and, when confronted with systemic injustice in a book, want to see the system destroyed, this will not be the book for you. We leave the world worse than when we started the book with only the small steps of some of the characters toward making a better world. This is a book about worldviews and how characters navigate those worldviews. How can they balance, if they can, their well-being and the tragedies and horrors of the world? This is the kind of book I love, so I gave it four stars; one deducted only because the plot at points became a little too convenient even for a low-plot book. I would definitely recommend if you are interested in these topics and these kinds of critiques.