Broder’s views on bingeing are brilliant but bawdy

In the early days of Twitter, there were a few voices that nearly everyone I knew followed. Lara Schoenhals’ whitegirlproblems was one of them, and Melissa Broder’s so sad today was another. Both Schoenhals and Broder parlayed said successful accounts into book deals. Schoenhals and her co-founders published White Girl Problems, a fluffy and funny anthropomorphizing of “Babe Walker,” the fictional face of the Twitter account, in 2012.

Broder’s book deal took a longer time—and a weightier turn. She published So Sad Today, a collection of essays based on her tweets, in 2016. I didn’t read it because, frankly, So Sad Today wasn’t really my thing. Less than two years later, Broder published her first novel, The Pisces. The plot did seem a bit more up my alley, and I was intrigued, but then—I’ll admit it—Dolly Alderton spoke about it on The High Low, and didn’t exactly offer up a ringing endorsement. It fell lower down my list until I forgot about it. Then 2021 came around, and a confluence of factors led me back to Broder.

First: I discovered a bookstore near my (then new, now former) apartment in the East Village, called Book Club. I had been looking to fill the void left by Three Lives & Co, the bookstore I had lived next to in my previous apartment. Like Three Lives, Book Club offers up an amazing curation of recent releases, and it was there that I first saw Milk Fed. I was instantly enticed by the synopsis—I remember showing it to my husband, whose book tastes are very different from mine, and being surprised that he, too, thought it looked interesting.

Second: Belletrist, a book club I’ve long considered the best in the biz for their creative and offbeat picks, selected Milk Fed as their February 2021 read.

Third: BookTok & Bookstagram took off, and Milk Fed was part of the crop of cool girl releases that was dominating social media at the time: All’s Well, Happy Hour, Other People’s Clothes, Death in Her Hands, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness…etc.

You’d think all of this would be enough to convince me to purchase it. But no…much like The Pisces, it kept falling lower and lower on my list—but always remained on my radar as TBR that got away. Until last summer, when my friend Julia told me she was reading it, and that she’d lend me her copy when she was done. She reads faster than anyone I know, so approximately 2 minutes after she started the book, her copy was mine for the reading. However, she’d also lent me All’s Well, and I decided to read that one first. I adored it, but when i started Milk Fed immediately after finishing, I felt there wasn’t enough ~ vibe variance ~ between the two reads, and decided it to shelve it in favor of something else.

Still with me? Because we’re getting to the plot now. Last week, after reading a mix of heavier and more historical fare, I decided the time was nigh, over a decade after I became aware of her existence, to give Miss Broder’s books a chance.

I finished Milk Fed in a matter of days, but it’s not a book I’d recommend to just anyone. First and foremost, I’m going to slap a big ol’ NSFW on this: it’s hard to say whether the book awakened some sort of latent Puritan prudishness within me or if it actually was one of the more sexual book I’ve read, but if you’re not into graphic sex scenes, you’re going to be skipping through at least 20% of this book. With that said, I was able to overcome said Puritan instincts and charged forward, and still loved it.

Milk Fed is about Rachel, a girl from New Jersey whose been raised in her mother’s tradition of counting every last calorie. Her life revolves around her meals, though they’re never more substantial than a topping-free froyo or flavored protein bar. Until one day, at her local froyo shop, when the employee she can usually count on to serve up her perfectly stingy serving is gone. In his place is Miriam, his Rubenesque older sister, intent on feeding Rachel her indulgent (read: horrifyingly caloric, to Rachel’s mind) froyo creations, promising she’ll prefer them to her standard fare.

Once Rachel accepts Miriam’s offer to try her signature treats, she finds her tightly controlled relationship with food spiraling out of control. This loss of control takes her on an Odyssey where she begins to reckon with her sexuality, familial relationships, faith, and general life purpose. The book is deep and sad while funny and thought-provoking, and the prose is tight but vivid. It may not be for everyone, but it’s undoubtedly a book by an author with a brilliant mind.