From the unapologetically dark Melissa Broder, poet and author of the essay collection (and Twitter account) So Sad Today and sexy, splashy fish man romance The Pisces comes this story of eating-disordered lapsed Jew Rachel, whose whole calorie-counting ethos comes crumbling down when she falls in love with the young and deliciously Rubenesque Orthodox woman, Miriam, who pops up one day behind the counter at her favorite fro-yo place. Together Rachel and Miriam feast on hot fudge and whipped cream, clove cigarettes, kosher Chinese food, black-and-white movies—and each other. But with Rachel’s dependence on her frosty, enabling mother and Miriam’s devotion above all to her family and faith, is theirs a relationship that can last? Or perhaps more importantly, one that can draw Rachel out of her doom spiral? Be warned that the writing about Rachel’s eating disorder here is harrowing—I’d expect nothing less, though, from the up-front Broder. A read for Ottessa Moshfegh devotees.

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.

📚 Whew, this is one of those books that's hard to read and yet impossible to put down.
📚 I feel like I could spend forever unpacking the many layers of power and control and submission in this book and all the ways we encounter those forces - food, family, sex, religion, and more.
📚 Okay, I really thought I could write a coherent review for this book but I can't. It's strange and wonderful, dreamlike and horribly realistic, beautiful and gross, comforting and terrifying. I can't wait to read more of Broder's work.
•
Content warnings: biphobia, body shaming, eating disorder, emotional abuse, fatphobia, homophobia, religious bigotry, and self harm.

CW: fatphobia, eating disorders, toxic relationships, body dysmorphia

Honestly I struggled with Milk Fed and was unable to finish it. I myself struggled with weight as a teen and it brought back a lot of those memories and feelings I thought I had dealt with.
Broder writes characters that are unlikeable and obviously going through some tough stuff, and honestly I do love that. But between the obsession Rachel had with Miriam’s fat body and the way she used people to find the love her mother had never given her, I just couldn’t continue on. I will say the writing was brilliant though, and this is definitely an intriguing read.

CW: disordered eating, depression, erotic content.

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis (own words): Rachel, the main character, is a bisexual woman infatuated with food. She counts every calorie, burns every calorie with rigorous exercise, and has a dysfunctional relationship with her mom and religion. Milk Fed is contemporary fiction in which Rachel develops an infatuation with an Orthodox Jewish women, Miriam, who is the opposite of Rachel. Miriam eats in excess, doesn't obsess over calories, and doesn't have a known eating disorder. Rachel finds comfort in the appearance of Miriam, a woman living in a larger body and seemingly loving herself. Miriam and Rachel both battle with their friendship, sexuality, and religion.

I thoroughly enjoyed this erotic, queer, and often hilarious read. This is the first Broder novel I've read and admittedly I blushed through most of it. Milk Fed covers various topics such as: sex, religion, unhealthy relationships with food, and bisexuality. More of author Broder novels include: The Pisces, So Sad Today, Last Sext, and Superdoom.

Wow. I hadn't really read the description of this book-- I read Melissa Broder's The Pisces, which made me want to read Milk Fed. The Pisces was fun, a little weird, but Milk Fed absolutely blew it out of the water.

The passages where Rachel talks about her calories/eating disorder and the poor relationship she has with her mother and other mother figures really hit home for me, as I also have experienced some of the same issues. It really reminded me of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, where you're kind of just walking through this person's life and nothing Big is happening, but by the end you're shocked about all the things you learned and the message. Absolutely loved it, will recommend, 4-4.5/5 stars from me.

This is a truly, uniquely bold book that addresses the topics of body dysmorphia, desire, and religion like no book has before. Not only are there entire pages dedicated to Rachel’s obsessive food intake & rituals, but there are also graphic sex scenes that might be too excessive for the tame at heart. The image on the cover will definitely get you some looks your way when reading this in public. Rachel has vivid, often sexually bizarre dreams that made me uncomfortable a few times. She’s a flawed protagonist, but so much of what she experiences or thinks is relatable. ⁣
I do wish the ending would have had a bit more substance to it. It ended abruptly, and I was hoping for more resolution regarding Rachel, Miriam, and Rachel’s relationship with her mother. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed this book and will be seeking out the author’s previous works. ⁣

Like the sun to The Pisces’ moon! I did not expect to devour this like I did, but it’s so delightfully readable. Really smart and entertaining - and also provided me with a perfect epithet for my tombstone (“probably someone who genuinely enjoyed a nice pear”) - but this is maybe one of the most abrupt endings I’ve ever read? Still, overall a very juicy read and a welcome distraction.

"Queer Jewish woman with disordered eating goes on communication detox from her over-controlling mother, walks into a frozen yogurt shop, sees fat Orthodox Jewish woman, falls in love" is not the kind of novel I expected to find myself devouring, but I consumed this in a fever dream and actually... really loved it? Rachel's desire for someone to mother her is painfully relatable. I don't remember a novel that delved into that desire quite so weirdly or wonderfully.

The sex scenes were a little too explicit for my (acespec) tastes, and I found myself wanting a more access to Miriam's character, but on the whole, I enjoyed this novel. Broder's writing is strong, and the short chapters propel
a narrative that could easily have gotten bogged down in a longer format. I've seen this book compared to Carmen Maria Machado's work, and I agree: if you liked In the Dream House or Her Body and Other Parties, you'll love this one. You also might enjoy it if you're a fan of Adrienne Rich, Kristen Arnett, or Audre Lorde.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The story had a odd humor to it and was quite erotic. As a whole, I enjoyed parts of the book and some I did not.
I liked how Rachel was “finding herself” throughout the story in both her sexuality, body dysphoria and religious faith. I liked how she was also very outspoken of her views.
I did not like the ending. I thought it was very abrupt and there was no real connection to the rest of the story.

Another brilliantly polarizing novel from Melissa Broder! I saw down on my couch the afternoon I received this ARC and didn’t look up until I’d devoured the entire novel. The Goodreads page for this novel is exactly as I thought it would be- people complaining that it’s too graphic, that it objectifies fat bodies, that the protagonist is unlikeable. Broder seems to breed polarization with every book she writes. Luckily, I absolutely loved it, and while all of these people are entitled to their opinions, their opinions are wrong.

Rachel is a secular Jewish woman with an all-too-familiar eating disorder. Her only sense of structure is her obsessive calorie counting. She can’t have actual relationships with anyone, because that means she would have to eat in front of them, which she can’t bring herself to do. Much of this came from her mother, who raised her with a little voice questioning every food decision she made. Again, this is very familiar to me!

Enter Miriam, a fat, frum woman, comfortable in her own skin, who works at the frozen yogurt shop owned by her Orthodox family. Miriam provides Rachel with yogurt and a sense of appreciating the little things in life, or life at all, and Rachel falls head over heels.

This is where the book really starts to shine for me. Rachel joins Miriam at her family’s Shabbat dinner, marveling at the warm family life she never had. While she makes some serious missteps with Miriam and doesn’t quite understand or respect all the nuances of frum life or Miriam’s boundaries, the relationship between the two women develops and so does Rachel’s relationship with herself. I knew when reading the novel that there would be critiques of Miriam’s body and the way it’s described by Rachel, but I disagree that it was fetishizing or objectifying. Rachel has a messed up relationship with bodies, and she is infatuated with a woman with a different body than her own that she has come to appreciate, instead of be repulsed by, as she had been conditioned to her whole life. This novel is one of the rare gems that truly captures how complex the relationship women have with each other can be. Do I want to fuck you, or be you? Do I love your body, or hate my own? Am I filling a self-esteem or mother shaped hole with this relationship? If you’re a queer woman who has never had even one of these questions before, please send me the number of your therapist.

The Jewish mythology and spirituality in the novel is what really got me to fall for this book. The symbolic use of a golem will probably be heavy-handed for many readers, but I really enjoyed how the golem theme and Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel became tools for Rachel to come to love herself, and her Judaism. Eating is a mitzvah! Sex with a woman is a mitzvah! Eating food with a warm family on Shabbat is fulfilling in ways calorie counting can never be!

As others have said, somewhat negatively, we don’t get Miriam’s perspective on things, but that’s the point of the novel- it’s Rachel’s experience. A novel of a queer frum woman’s struggle with her identity is certainly a book I would read, but it’s not this book. It’s Rachel’s story, and her golem. Also, side note, how could I not love a book that features the protagonist hallucinating a dancing, human-sized loaf of challah?

And similar to what the rabbi tells Rachel in the novel, we are all our own golems, unfinished substances, doing the best with ourselves and the people we meet- sometimes less than they (or we) deserve.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The deal: Rachel is sort of aimlessly meandering around LA, praying at the altar of calorie counting and mommy issues when she meets Miriam, an Orthodox Jew who works at her preferred frozen yogurt place and is insistent upon feeding her. Wherever you imagine the sexual tension is from that description, crank it up at least 200 notches. (Sidenote: I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for this review.)

Is it worth it?: I think so? This was the weirdest thing I’ve read in a minute but I could not put it down. It’s horny and strange and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Like when something is this flavor of alluring, is that a knock on Broder for perpetuating the problematic world of body issues/fatphobia/etc. with some heavy-handed Freudian 101 or a job well done for creating such a flawed and at times horrifyingly unlikable protagonist who serves as a mirror for our broken culture? IDK! I’m leaning toward the latter, but also not sure about how Miriam seems to mostly exist as a sex object for Rachel vs. a fully dynamic person. I think ultimately I don’t have the lived experience to have an opinion on a lot of this. A word of warning (in an area where I have plennnnnttttyyy of lived experience): there’s extensive detailing of disordered eating in here. Like EXTENSIVE. If you even have the tiniest feeling that this might be a deal-breaker for you, you should trust that instinct.

Pairs well with: frozen yogurt with all the damn toppings, challah, some play-doh so you can make your own golem

B

This book is very well written. The way Rachel described the foods she splurged on made you feel as though you were also eating them. On a scale of 1-5 for steaminess with 5 being the highest I’d give it a 6. Who knew simply holding hands could be so intense?

It was interesting to learn so much about the Jewish religion and what was/wasn’t accepted by Miriam’s family.

The ending felt a little rushed and I hoped we’d have more details on Rachel’s relationship with food or other people.

Novel. 1st person POV. Woman protagonist.

A fun, fast paced story about sex, food, Judaism, and the body. Set in the backdrop of 21st century Los Angeles Hollywood agencies and comedy clubs, this coming of age 20-something novel combines the story of desire for the unattainable with the love of, and coming to terms with, the self. Not a truthful self per se--a work in progress. Also Melissa is a very funny storyteller.

This book is hypnotic--I found myself losing track of time and repeatedly saying "one more chapter", It comes with a major content warning for disordered eating and if someone is sensitive to this, I genuinely would not recommend it. Otherwise, I think this exploration of eating, generational guilt and shame, and Jewish culture is so uniquely involving.

As would be expected from the author of <i>The Pisces</>, this short book is imaginative, uncomfortable, and hilarious. At its heart is the relationship between a mother and her daughter (which is actually about how a woman forms her own identity), but there are also eating disorders, LGBTQ desire, and even Israeli-Palestinian politics. I wished the story continued because I wanted to learn more about the protagonist, who is immensely flawed but also likable. Recommended for all libraries.

I heard about this book on Alma and it seemed like it ticked so many boxes for me. I love Jewish lit, I love stories about women who love women and I hate diet culture. So all signs pointing me to loving this book.

I was pretty disappointed that in the spectrum of the American Jewish canon, this book was much more Philip Roth than Dara Horn. As in, if Philip Roth for some reason wrote a novel about queer neurodivergent women, this might be it. I kept trying to figure out why this book was making me so uncomfortable when I usually I'm all in for a little smut, and then I realized it's because it comes off like it was written by a man for men, even though it obviously wasn't.

Keeping with the tone of 1960s rhetoric with 2020 people, this book is obsessed with Freud to an unsettling degree. It kind of reads like a series of psychoanalysis sessions which mostly led me to the realization that the subconscious might be an interesting concept, but delving into that of the protagonist's is more boring than anything else. In other words, I don't care much for hearing about people's dreams IRL and I still don't care when it's a fictional character, symbolism be damned.

There were some redeeming factors: the romance is sweet, even though it subscribes to the old-fashioned and incorrect assumption that falling in love will "fix" your mental illnesses, as it does for Rachel. I love a good golem parallel. Also, there's a scene towards the end where Rachel (the protagonist) brings up the concept to Miriam's (the love interest) family that maybe their son serving in the IDF isn't without its issues and they basically gaslight her into believing she's a self-hating Jew, and that felt so real. Overall though, I'm disappointed, but maybe I was just hoping for too much. I wanted a queer Jewish Dietland and instead I just got a queer Portnoy's Complaint.

4 stars
This was a bit of a difficult read.
It was a personal delve into the life of Rachel. It was graphic (not in a bad way) about a lot of things. It doesn’t shy away from anything.
It’s raw, it’s true, its unapologetic, it’s human.
I thought it was a great read that doesn’t hold back.

Mommy issues!

This was a difficult read for me. I felt like the hyperfocus on bodies and the fetishization of MIriam's fat body in particular were difficult to read at times. The first half felt gratuitous and while the second half had some beautiful moments it just didn't come together for me.

Broder's writing is so, so good and I generally love weird books, but the graphic elements here actually worked against my ability to connect with the narrator and the story. It took something away from a story I think I would have typically loved.

*I was sent a free ARC of this book by Scribner in exchange for an honest review*

Quick witted and tenacious, Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed follows Rachel, a young Jewish woman working at a talent agency in LA. Rachel is ruled by food rituals and the tumultuous relationship with her mother, until she meets Miriam - an Orthodox Jew who works at the local yogurt shop that Rachel frequents. As their relationship develops, Rachel finds herself having to confront the way she was living and the way she wants to continue on.

This was a very fun read. Smart, sexy, and unexpectedly tender, Broder explores the depths of motherhood and sexuality wrapped in a story that is both deeply queer and uniquely Jewish. While sometimes sour and unlikeable, protagonist Rachel’s story is brought into clear focus by the intimacy of her inner monologue, which often probes the depths of topics that are taboo and uncomfortable. This grounds her in a sympathetic place and makes the result of her journey all the more meaningful. While not exactly the novel I was expecting from Broder, Milk Fed was a joy to read.