Erm.

Hmmm.

The style of this was ok for the first few chapters and then got repetitive. The messaging about the beauty market and body image was clever to begin with but then randomly the direction of the story and character made not much sense.
It ends in a questionable but not exciting unexplained way for the character.

Didn't leave me with the impact I thought it would do when I was onky a few chapters in.

whatever.

Oh, more neurotic introspection in fiction. Great.

Ok this book was awesome and I really loved it and like I wanted to give it 5 stars but I just felt it sort of fumbled the bag in the last section (and sort of had that long short story feel rather than coming together as a novel), but don’t get me wrong it’s a really amazing book. I think what I love is that (at least in the first two sections) there is ostensibly this surreality that a lot of authors play with these days, but in this book it actually feels real. I know that doesn’t really make sense, but the point is that there’s this stuff that you can tell is made up, but it seems like something that could exists. Like the ducking supermarket where they rearrange the layout every week so you can’t find things which statistically causes you to buy more stuff since you have to wander around the store longer—like that is in some ways satirical but it also feels very much like something that could be real / some places already do it in a way. Plus I’m just such a sucker for all the body stuff which it really just does such a good job about. I think the ending just got me because that’s where it actually started to feel a bit more not actually real and that broke a certain productive tension for me, but maybe that was the point and it was still great.

2.5

This story still plays like a movie in my head. Kerman writes about the anxiety of modern life like someone who's all too familiar with her own quiet nightmares. Sure, this plot isn't ultimately surprising, but that's almost even more calmly disturbing. Read this.