Quirky, funny, shocking, dirty, and moving - Milk Fed is an absolute gem.

Rachel as a protagonist is brilliantly constructed. In her, Broder strikes a perfect balance between relatable and reprehensible. On the surface she's not a character I would ever imagine myself caring about, but the more we got to know her the more I found myself truly rooting for her.

The novel begins with our protagonist's therapist telling her she needs to go on what is for all intents and purposes a detox from her mother, cutting off contact completely for a period of time to try and establish some boundaries. It's only later that we really get to the crux of why this detox is taking place, but for me it was certainly a good hook into the rest of the story. Rachel obsessively monitors everything that passes her lips. It's like calorie counting extreme for someone who's sailed through the first fifty levels of calorie counting and needs an extra challenge. That changes when she meets Miriam. Miriam, who works at Rachel's local froyo spot, is the antithesis of our protagonist. She is an Orthodox Jew whereas Rachel's faith has lapsed, she is fat and Rachel is thin, she is happy in a way Rachel is not. In spending time with Miriam, Rachel allows herself to let go for the first time in a long time and open her mind to the happiness that has been available to her all along.

Admittedly not one for everyone, I for one really loved this book and devoured it as hungrily as Rachel devoured Miriam's special frozen yoghurt. Food is a topic that some find difficult and triggering so I would suggest steering clear of this read if you know that's you.

I was so excited for this book that I was really worried it would be a huge disappointment. It’s so unbelievably rare to find decent adult contemporary fiction that has decent LGBTQ+ representation, especially with WLW relationships. Luckily, I wasn’t disappointed at all, and I really enjoyed it!
Honestly, I wasn’t really expecting the disordered eating to resonate with me as much as it did. As someone who used to have a really unhealthy attitude towards food and dieting, I felt like the way this was written was excellent. In particular, the first chapter is one of the best representations of disordered eating that I’ve ever read.
I also loved the Jewish representation- I think its so rare to find books where all the main characters are Jewish, and I loved how nuanced the experience of religion was portrayed. It was also extremely interesting to see the intersection of religion and sexuality, as this is usually only seen through a very Christian perspective.
Rachel, the protagonist and narrator, isn’t always likeable, but she’s definitely relatable. My one criticism is that, because Rachel is often quite introspective and preoccupied, we really don’t learn very much about characters at all. In fact, I found that this made it hard to warm to other characters. I wanted to like Miriam and to feel invested in their relationship, but I felt that we learn very little about Miriam. We know that she loves food, is very close to her family, and at one point is rude to waiters- but otherwise we know extremely little about her. I do think that this was a narrative choice though, and the book really is about Rachel’s relationship with herself rather than with other characters, but I would have liked to root for the secondary characters more.
I found this book to be a beautiful exploration of so many things; sexuality, motherhood, relationships, and body image. I just couldn’t help relating to Rachel even when she was unlikable and difficult. And the descriptions of food were so sensual and beautifully written that I now feel like I deserve to order at least five separate takeaways.
Thank you so much to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for granting me access to this book in exchange for my honest review!

Some may think this is great, but it’s not for me. Having a hard time concentrating on reading and finding a book that I can get in to right now, sorry.

Thanks for the opportunity

CW: Disordered eating, mentions of bulimia/bingeing

In 2017, I read Melissa Broder's first novel, 'The Pisces'. Plenty of reviews detested it, calling it pretentious, gross and weird, among other things. I'm almost certain the same epithets will be delivered to her second novel - this book is not going to be for everyone. But, a lot like 'The Pisces', I found myself oddly enjoying 'Milk Fed' - so much so that I read it incredibly quickly.

Marketed as a novel about food, god and sex, Milk Fed follows Rachel, a young Jewish woman with a terrible relationship with food and her body. She restricts herself to an insane amount, plans her days around the things she'll eat, carefully controlling her routine and her life. Until she meets an Orthodox woman named Miriam, who coaxes her out of her calorie-controlled shell and allows her to breathe.

I liked this book. The graphic sex scenes are a lot. In fact, I often found myself sort of skimming those because they felt graphic for graphic's sake, rather than giving anything interesting to the story. It was a little difficult to read the parts about disordered eating, but the great paragraphs of description about the joys of food made up for it. I can't quite describe how I liked this book or why, I just sort of did. The pacing is good, the story moves well.

My one major disappointment was the ending. It just sort of finished with no pay-off. It almost felt disjointed from the rest of the story, like it had been tacked on quickly because the author didn't know how to finish her novel. I suspect I wanted a slightly more conclusive ending, but Broder's point was almost certainly to make the ending uncertain.

Rachel has grown up starving herself to please her mother. She hates herself and has never had her mother's love. All of the meager portions she eats are measured out and are all Rachel believes she deserves. Until she meets Miriam.
Miriam introduces plenty. Miriam is sensual and fat while Rachel is thin and miserable. Miriam draws Rachel in to her world and the two women fall for each other.
I felt uncomfortable with both the depictions of Rachel starving herself and the gluttony that Miriam enjoys. Neither position seemed healthy or sustainable.

"Who is that 'out of control' woman you are so afraid of becoming? What does she look like?"

Funny, sexy, perverted, and extremely fun to read! I was reminded of Ottessa Moshfegh (whose narrators are arguably much darker, and riskier). But this was still a cathartically enjoyable read, and very funny. Themes include appetite (both food and sexual), mothers, perfection, why L.A. culture sucks, and what "self-care" really means. I also liked the golem thread of the plot. I could have used fewer dream sequences, and tbh I found the mother plot a bit too typical. MAJOR triggers in here for people with disordered eating, though it definitely contains a very therapeutic/healing message... I'm pretty convinced the author has read Marion Woodman.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

"Life was a lot less bleak when you were staring straight down the barrel of a burrito. Was this how some people lived all the time?"

"It was like being asphyxiated by a part of my own self - the need for approval and validation I so despised. More of me? That was the last thing I wanted!"

"Did anyone genuinely like anything? Most art was bad. I preferred the work of dead people. At least the dead weren't on Twitter."

"I thought about how I wanted to take a knife and cut myself out of me."

I’ve followed Broder’s work for a while and was excited when I saw she had a new novel out after The Pisces.

Her writing style is easy to pick out - insightful but simple, with a sense of humour that oscillates between dark and vulgar. In Milk Fed, she focuses on Rachel, a 24 year old Jewish woman in LA whose sole focus is calorie counting and staying thin to please her mother. She meets Esther, who briefly takes the form of a Golem - taunting her sexually and drawing her away from her diet religion.

I really enjoyed the book, but it did get a bit repetitive after a while and I felt like there wasn’t much of a resolution. Despite that, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who’s ever enjoyed Broder’s style.

A marmite book, I guess?

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy!

A book about self esteem, lust, food and family. A clever and funny novel with some very hard hitting subjects. I loved the combination of food, sexuality and upbringing. This book is sexy, the characters rich with personality and the settings realistic. This is a very visual story- perfectly descriptive
There are a lot of difficult subjects in the book that could be triggering to some

Off the bat, I'll give a content warning for eating disorders.

In this book, we are deep in the POV of Rachel, a Jewish part time comedian with an eating disorder that therapy doesn't seem to be touching. So much is explored here and I think all of it is done in an effective way. The sex scenes verge on the gross at times, but it all feels very honest. The writing is sharp but intelligent. I like how in her exploration of another woman's body, Rachel seems to gain some acceptance of her own and gets some relief from her ED. I'll be sure to pick up The Pisces at some point.

I tried to read this one slowly, but I think it's impossible not to get sucked in - I managed to spread it out over 2 days and ended up staying up late to finish it. It's that good.

The main character Rachel's complicated relationship with food is intertwined with her equally complicated relationship with her mother, Judaism, her sexuality, and desire. Milk Fed is messy and raw and wonderful - the writing flows so well whilst remaining nuanced, insightful and complex. I loved the musings on God, and the hallucinations with the golem and the Rabbi.
I loved the secondary characters in the story: Miriam, an Orthodox Jewish woman who works at Rachel's favourite fro-yo shop, Ana, the co-worker that Rachel wants to mother her, and Ofer, the overly PC self proclaimed super feminist boss.

I hadn't heard of Melissa Broder before reading this, but now I'm going to try and find everything else she's written.

Oh my goooooooood you are making me so uncomfortable (flame eyes emoji) I LOVE IT!!

A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane.

There definitely needs to be a lot of content warnings for this book! The main character has an eating disorder and details of calorie counting and other methods for calorie restriction are absolutely rife which many people may find super triggering. It’s quite clear in this blurb that this is a theme of the book but it was even more explicit than I expected. And of course with this, a LOT of fat phobia.

Speaking of explicit, there is a lot of very detailed sex and sex fantasies here.

I wasn’t sure if I liked this book, but I found it so so so compelling. I literally started it and read a third of it in one sitting without moving. I ending up reading 3/4 of it in one evening and finished it the next day. So I was definitely engrossed!

I don’t want to give too much away, but Milk Fed is the story of Rachel, work works in LA for a talent agency and suffers from anorexia. She also has a terrible relationship with her mother, so her therapist assigns her a 90 day detox from contact with her mother.

From the blurb I expected more about the mother-daughter relationship, but it’s definitely more about Rachel, her relationship with food and her interest in a woman called Miriam who works at a frozen yoghurt shop Rachel frequents.

Did I like it? I’m not sure. I definitely couldn’t put it down and I found everything very believable and realistic and the relationships very real, particularly between the main character and her mother.

I feel like I wanted a bit more. The character development is good but you see it coming as the book progresses, but I did like the themes of gender, sexuality, expectations on women and religion. Miriam and Rachel are both Jewish and I found their different approaches to this interesting.

This is a book I’m really interested to read the discourse about as I’m not sure what I think.

3.5 stars

To me, Broder can do no wrong. So Sad Today and The Pisces are both incredible, and I was super happy that Milk Fed didn’t disappoint. This is a nuanced, thoughtful depiction of disordered eating, as well as Judaism in contemporary America, fatphobia and bisexuality.

I loved The Pisces but I think I love Milk Fed even more. I thought it was a very sensitive approach to eating disorders and self esteem. I felt completely absorbed in Rachel’s story and her journey towards accepting herself.

Rachel is a lapsed Jew who lives through calorie restriction; that was until her therapist recommended a 90 day detox from her mother, where these restrictions begun. Meeting Miriam, who works at her frozen yogurt shop, changes everything.

It's a story about "food, sex and god" and, tbh, yes that captures it really. There was something addictive from the start and it was a fine, and very easy to inhale, read. Melissa Broder's writing is whip smart, and she draws complex and women so brilliantly.

I struggled with this book to begin with but am glad I persevered and in the end, I found it difficult to put down. It was a funny, self-deprecating romp of a book telling the story of a lapsed Jew, Rachel, her difficult relationship with food, her mother and her burgeoning sexuality. I was disappointed that there wasn't the typical happy ever after but content that Rachel had found happiness within herself.

Melissa Broder writes some strange novels. The Pisces is about a woman with low self esteem who takes up with a merman and this one keeps up the standard with a similar heroine but, in this instance, she finds love with a woman and food! Rachel, the heroine in question, has a serious eating disorder brought on by an unpleasant mother and a distant father which has come to rule her life.

The first chapter of the book is about what she eats day by day and minute by minute. It’s a monument to obsessive calorie control, assisted by eating far too much sweetener but, predictably, when her control is lost she binges uncontrollably. It’s a good description of an eating disorder and its capacity to rule one’s life.

What quickly becomes clear is the link between her controlling diet, her perceptions of herself and her relationships with others so that it is logical that she becomes friendly with a girl from a yoghurt bar. The book traces the slow expansion of their relationship and the way that Rachel, literally, eats her way into it. The woman she meets there, Miriam, is controlled in a different way by her orthodox Jewish religion and its expectations and she slowly cast off these controls as Rachel abandons her diet.

Without being coy about it, Miriam is marginally obese but her plump, expansive frame is a heavenly counterpoint to Rachel’s starved body. She eats plenty to maintain it as well. In fact, food is everywhere in the novel. The film adaptation will be a monument to product placement because everything is branded, instant and understood in terms of its calories and, frequently, its sweetness.

It’s no wonder Rachel needs these compensations from what we read about her past, the stripping away of her self-confidence and her tentative steps to discover herself as a lesbian. It makes her a difficult friend and, having been invited to Miriam’s house and taken to the bosom of her overly loving and embracing family, she messes up big time. She messes up at work as well. In fact, life generally is a struggle.

Somehow, this unlikely book works. The sumptuousness of the food, the over enclosing nature of Miriam’s family, the emergent relationship and Rachel’s constant hatred and rejection of herself and her body are wrapped together in an unlikely package which carries the reader along. Some critics describe the book as erotic and there is something slightly strange in the way that everything is oral so that the eating overlaps with the sex. As to whether you find it erotic, well that’s up to you, but it might make you think twice as you tuck into your dinner!

Milk Fed is not for the faint hearted. It is raw, explicit and dives into complex relationships between the body, food, mothers and daughters. This novel will divide opinion, but I enjoyed how Melissa Broder doesn't shy away from the grittiness of life, desires and queer relationships.

I have not read any of Melissa Broder’s books before. This was an interesting and eclectic take on erotica.
The main erotica is, in my view, food erotica. The details for food and calories are intense. The intoxicating way eating disorders can affect mental health and stress levels are evident in this book. The sexual scenes are well described even if could have been enhanced. You become close the the main character and feel for her loss of love, both maternal and from the lack of friendship. A Jewish girl who had lost her way both in faith and love. Worthwhile read.

Broder's previous book 'The Pisces' could be classed under Venice Beach Merman Erotica, this book is LA Eating Disorder Jewish Lesbian Erotica. If that is your bag then you are in luck!
I enjoyed 'The Pisces', it was a joyous, daft romp that had some hilarious comments on dating and personal grooming. 'Milk Fed' is just on the wrong side of angst for me, I needed a bit more joy and a little less body dysmorphia. I did not warm to Rachel, she was so self absorbed that I felt exhausted, to the extent that I found it hard to feel sorry for her when she is let down by all those around her.