Milk Fed: A Novel

Melissa Broder
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Milk Fed: A Novel

Melissa Broder
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Overview

320 PAGESENGLISH

Promotional Details
"An erotic, singular experience that could only come from Broder's mind... brimming with tension, and food, and fantasies." —Isaac Fitzgerald, "The Today Show"

“Hilarious, lush and sorrowful…the short, tart, candid chapters are like snacks, and the reader cannot help but reach for another until it is gone…This work is unafraid of vulnerability, and appetite, and loss.”
—Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Captivating…delicious and depraved…a ruthless, laugh-out-loud examination of life under the tyranny of diet culture... You will eat this up, run to buy a copy for a friend, and realize with a sigh that every one of your friends needs this book in her life.” 
Glamour

"A delectable exploration of physical and emotional hunger...  combines Broder's singular style with adventures of the calorie- and climax-filled kind, sumptuous fillings surrounded by perfectly baked plot." —Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post

“Profoundly sexy yet deeply sad…Milk Fed gathers strands of faith, hunger, queerness, lust, and loneliness and braids them into a fully risen challah of human experience.”
—Emma Specter, Vogue 

“Outstanding . . . a bold and luscious story of desire in all its forms—for food, for sex, for belonging. . . . Rarely has the fraught intersection of pleasure, appetite, and diet culture been written about so deliciously as in Milk Fed.” —Esquire

"Anything by Melissa Broder is an immediate must-read... a precise blend of desire, discomfort, spirituality, and existential ache makes Broder’s depiction of the human experience so canny.
—Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed

 “A thrilling examination of hunger, desire, faith, family and love.”
—Time Magazine

“Bravely questions the particularly female lionization of thin and loathing of fat, landing on fresh explanations…deliciously droll… a celebration of bodily liberation.”
The New York Times

“Dangerously delicious and utterly idiosyncratic, Milk Fed is the honest, compelling convergence of diet culture, religion, and sex that we've been craving.”
Marie Claire 

"Clever, thoughtful, and erotic."
Bust 

“A Freudian fable of sorts, one that is hilarious, self-deprecating and full of Broder's signature profligate brilliance. This visceral and transporting portrait of self-denial and its twin, excess, sheds light on the psychology underpinning the American obsession with weight. Daring, chaotic and pleasingly heretical, Milk Fed is the work of a total pro.” 
—Emma Levy, Shelf Awareness

“If you’re going to read one book this February, make it this one… Milk Fed is brutally funny, poetic, and at times, totally bizarre…Broder writes with the kind of unfiltered honesty that lives deep inside of us”
—Gina Vaynshteyn, Apartment Therapy 

"A delicious new novel that ravishes with sex and food... Broder has a rare ability to ground her fantasy in reality without undermining her imaginative vision, making it feel personal and raw and relatable... with humanity, sardonic wit, and erotic scenes so potent that the heat of my blushing face made my NYC-apartment radiator’s seem tepid, Milk-Fed vividly evokes the lives of each woman, so that we’re fully invested in them."
—Kera Bolonik, Boston Globe

"A romp... a pageant of bodily juices and exploratory fingers and moan after moan of delight... [from] a wild, wicked mind."
—Hillary Kelly, The Los Angeles Times

"Explores hunger in all its permutations through the eyes of Rachel, who begins a romance with a woman who works at the frozen yogurt shop she frequents. As their relationship deepens, so does Rachel’s capacity for nourishment and pleasure, bodily and spiritually." 
The New York Times

“A revelation...Melissa Broder has produced one of the strangest and sexiest novels of the new year...exhilarating.”
—Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly 

“Deeply hilarious and embarrassingly relatable.”
—Samantha Irby, author of Wow, No Thank You

"Milk Fed hits that sweet spot where pleasure and tension intersect, where the sumptuous exploration of sexuality and spirit meets the rigidities of culture and society. Strange and surreal, Broder's writing is a marvel of wit, heart, and thoughtful curiosity about the body and mind and how these things can overflow their boundaries to become utterly new."
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Could Have a Body Like Mine

Milk Fed is a novel of appetites; a luscious, heartbreaking story of self-discovery through the relentless pursuit of desire. I couldn’t get enough of this devastating and extremely sexy book.” 
—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

"Broder's funny, semi-sweet writing will leave you ravenous for more."
—The Week

"Only Melissa Broder could dig into our obsessions, the ways our parents have ruined us, and blossoming queer love with such a bold panache."
—Lit Hub

"Few writers so innately understand or better capture the endless, palpable hunger that so many people carry around with them, day after day. This hunger is for food, for sex, for love, for compassion, for understanding, and it is this kind of ravenous appetite that Broder explores in her exultant new novel... riotously funny and perfectly profane." 
—Refinery 29

"A dizzily compelling story of love, lust, addiction, faith, maternal longing, and...frozen yogurt... Broder’s sex writing is, as always, first-rate, but perhaps even more striking is her ability to lay bare the frantic interior calculus of disordered eating alongside the hypnotic pull of spirituality."
—Vogue 

"A sensuous and delightfully delirious tale... Filled with an unadulterated filthiness that would make Philip Roth blush, Broder's latest is a devour-it-in-one-sitting wonder.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

"Bold, wry, and delightfully dirty... Broder is a formidable writer. She captures all the sticky sweetness, the pleasurable tensions between yearning and satiation...  a sad, funny romp about learning to let yourself want what you want."
—Kirkus

"Spell-caster Broder guides readers through this seriously tender tale of transformation with seamless humor and staggering smarts: it contains multitudes. An empathic, enrapturing, unputdownable novel of faith, sex, love, and nurture."
Booklist, starred review

"With luscious descriptions of delectable foods and fantastical romps through imagination, Milk Fed oscillates between serious and playful, obsessive and free, and explores the difficulties of loving oneself in a world that prizes thinness above all else. This poignant exploration of desire, religion, and daughterhood is hard to resist.”
Publishers Weekly

“Sin as self-discovery, appetite as insight, transgression as transformation, Milk Fed is at once hilarious and heartbreaking; watching Broder's characters try to love themselves might just make you love yourself.... or at least hate yourself a little less." 
Shalom Auslander, author of Mother for Dinner

"Smart, funny, sexy, and hard to put down. In this fast-moving, deeply compelling novel, Melissa Broder combines an unexpected (and very hot) love story with a sharp-edged examination of body image, religion, and cultural identity." 
—Tom Perrotta, author of Mrs. Fletcher

Overall rating: 3.6 / 5 from 5 reviews.

AI Generated Review Summary

Summary topics

Review topics: [rachel, become, writing, woman, scenes].

Review highlights

Reviews

Funny,awkward,sexy

"I loved this book. Everything about it, the characters felt so accessible. I also as a queer woman who battled an eating disorder loved the very real experience of navigating the weirdness we can feel in ourselves. Just a huge f@&$ing BRAVO to Melissa Broder."

Chrissyreads (5/5)

Uncomfortable & Hilarious

"Milk Fed is a sharp, intimate, and darkly funny exploration of desire, hunger, and the complicated ways our bodies shape our identities. Broder follows Rachel, a calorie-obsessed Jewish woman whose rigid routines begin to unravel when she meets Miriam, a warm, voluptuous Orthodox woman who works at a frozen yogurt shop. What unfolds is a sensual, sometimes unsettling journey into pleasure, spirituality, and self-acceptance. Broder’s writing is both raw and vulnerable, blending humour with emotional depth in a way that feels deeply human. She captures obsession—whether with food, religion, or love—with an honesty that can be uncomfortable, but always compelling. I picked up this Milk Fed looking for some relation or connection, as someone who struggles with an eating disorder myself. Although very familiar with the character’s habits, this book surprised me in many ways. Milk Fed is ultimately a tender portrait of a woman learning to feed herself in more ways than one. Something refreshing."

Tia M. (3/5)

Spicy but meh

"I found the story slow and despite various reviews calling Milk Fed “hilarious”, I didn’t find this funny at all. I liked the character growth of Rachel and there were some fun spicy scenes! But overall didn’t feel drawn to finish this as quickly as other books."

Char (3/5)

Incredibly layered

"Disturbing, alluring, hilarious, tragic. Melissa Broder has done it again."

Anna (5/5)

Not For Me

"Many thanks to NetGalley, Simon and Schuster Canada and Melissa Border for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My thoughts and opinions are 100% my own and independent of receiving an advance copy. What did I just read??? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t like it. Well, let me say that it wasn’t for me. I was uncomfortable the whole way through. Not in the good uncomfortable, And no, it wasn’t the sex. I’m fine reading hot and steamy sex scenes, but this was like being in a self absorbed, neurotic person’s head 24/7. There was no escape. I guess that’s the point. Rachel could never escape her own issues, but boy, I felt like I was sucked down this black hole of self indulgent, poor me psychosis where who do we blame but the mother, of course. Rachel is stuck in her life because her mommy wasn’t nice. She told her to not to get fat, lose weight and well, welcome to having a Jewish mother. I didn’t enjoy the main character. Rachel seemed stuck throughout the whole novel so it became very repetitive. She is obsessive about counting her food calories, has body dysmorphia among other issues. She meets Miriam, an Orthodox jewish woman who works in a frozen yogurt shop. She becomes obsessed with how Miriam enjoys her food, then she becomes obsessed with Miriam. Obviously this is a relationship doomed to fail. I couldn’t wait to finish this book. It was a slog to the end. The ending didn’t have any redeeming qualities. This one was definitely not for me."

Girlsound (2/5)

Q&A

  • Published date: Aug 03, 2021
  • Language: English
  • No. of Pages: 320
  • Publisher: Scribner
  • ISBN: 9781982142506
  • Dimensions: 5.25" W x 0.6" L x 8.0" H
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Milk Fed, The Pisces, and Death Valley, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. She has written for The New York TimesElle, and New York magazine’s The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @SoSadToday and @MelissaBroder and Instagram @RealMelissaBroder.

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