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Melissa Broder's previous novel, 'Milk Fed,' showed her talent for making reality uncanny. In 'Death Valley,' a woman finds redemption in a giant cactus.
Book World: Melissa Broder s Milk Fed is a delectable exploration of physical and emotional hunger
Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post
Feb. 9, 2021
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Melissa Broder s delectable new Milk Fed, like The Pisces, her 2011 debut about a merman, contains deliciously steamy sex scenes. In Milk Fed, those scenes get tough competition from lusciously over-the-top food scenes, involving protagonist Rachel devouring everything from convenience-store nachos (polishing them off while still in line) to a frozen-yogurt concoction called The Peppermint Plotz to a Shabbos meal of long-simmered cholent.
Twenty-four-year-old Rachel, who works at a Hollywood talent agency, wasn t always this way. Her mother, obsessed with thinness, was oblivious to that obsession s effects on her daughter. As a teenager, when Rachel confesses that she thinks she has an eating disorder, her mother responds: Anorexics are much skinnier than you. Adult Rachel measures out her d