I don’t know that I enjoyed reading this book, but it got under my skin with its exploration (and conflation) of hunger and consumption, the natural versus the artificial, and what is real versus what is façade. In the world imagined in the novel, beauty products are edible, and the most popular snack food, Kandy Kakes, is completely synthetic. A local man is moved to action when he learns of the inhumane treatment of veal calves, but the culture’s relationship to food is so dysfunctional that the only way he sees he can save the veal is by buying and eating as many cutlets as he possibly can. A cardboard figure of him ends up being used as an advertisement for veal at Wally’s, the area grocery store chain, which might strike the reader as ironic, but somehow makes sense in the context of the novel. I think for me the image that made the most lasting impression is one of deprivation. Kandy Kat, the cartoon mascot for Kandy Kakes, is on an endless, futile quest for the snack food, which always cruelly eludes him. He is repeatedly described as emaciated, ribs visible through his skin, weak and desperate. He is mirrored in the book’s main female characters, who are obsessed with being thin and angular and limit their food intake to a painful degree, surviving on oranges and popsicles. At the same time, they are equally fixated on cosmetics and skin care products and the transformations they promise. Amid all of this turmoil over nourishment and the internal and external, the concept of individual identity seems to be dissipating. The three primary characters are named A, B, and C, interchangeable points in a love triangle. The narrator, A, describes a recent phenomenon, the “Disappearing Dads,” men who mysteriously vanish from their families and are later found in another life more or less indistinguishable from their own, seemingly unaware that anything has happened. A popular reality TV show challenges couples to correctly identify their partners among a group, and the success rate is dismal. A joins what is essentially a cult, “The Church of the Conjoined Eater,” which takes this idea of erasing identity to its extreme. Even after all of the oddness that preceded it, this development was a bit much for me, and I don’t think I really got it. Still, the book offers a lot to think about with regard to consumer culture. Is anything we’re being sold really going to sustain us, or is it all as fake as the plastic food dangling from the ceiling at Wally’s?

This was sold to me as a Delilloian satire but if we HAVE to compare it to a previously published white dude, it's much closer in tone and content to Coover, whom I've never really been keen on. The first two parts kind of amble along and while the language is interesting and often beautiful, it largely misses its aim for me. I really have no interest in the "we live in a body" fiction that seems to be all the rage these days. Although perhaps that's a function of my particular set of privileges. Even so, you can only read so many poorly written and improbably conceived commercials for pseudo-hostess cupcakes before your eyes glaze over. The third and last part about the cult (which scans to me like Scientology for eating disorders) is the only part that could have been interesting but it's too thinly developed and feels tacked-on, like a novella at then end of a short story collection. The cynical part of me thinks Kleeman gathered a bunch of short stories she was working on and cobbled them into a narrative to sell as a "novel" but I'd prefer to be optimistic and think that this novel is just a misfire.

Not to be that guy but My Year of Rest and Relaxation did this story better and more coherently. Jump on that before Yorgios Lanthimos turns it into a movie. No one wants to be caught dead reading the movie tie-in copy on the subway.

This was so boring but I guess it made commentary abt the materialism of our world but also it was boring so take your pick

Darkly surreal comic novel about consumerism, consumption, cults and hunger. It's reads dream-pop body horror. The novel is narrated by A., a young, probably anorexic twenty something living a dull suburban life as a copywriter. Her roommate is B., who eats even less and is desperate to look exactly like A.

A. lives in a world where television commercials are slightly surreal and very menacing. She describes commercials for one brand over and over again about a starving cat that desperately wants to eat a snack cake and, like Wiley Coyote just never gets his man. There's also a TV show called Who's My Partner? where contestants are blindfolded and have to pick out their partner from a group of people with the exact same body proportions as they are dancing onstage. There's a Wal-Mart type supermarket called Wally's that, again, is just enough off center.

Meanwhile, middle aged fathers are disappearing only to be found wandering malls hundreds of miles away, and people are joining a cult where everyone wears sheets over their head.

As A. becomes more and more disenchanted with the world she lives in, she becomes more drawn to their cult, the Church of the Conjoined Eater. What their goal is, I wouldn't spoil, except to say Kleeman is definitely thematically precise.

This is a good book, a very good book, though not quite a great one. A. is definitely a well-drawn and relatable character in the sense that all of us know a young, perhaps overly skinny young girl lost and drifting in and out of relationships and some people are that girl. Kleeman pinpoints A.'s desperation and malaise perfectly. The language is simultaneously precise and languorous. The book just goes on a bit too long and it takes a tad too long to get from point A. to point B.

It is though, fiercely intelligent and captivating. A very solid debut.

I just....don't even know what I just read. I am giving this 3 stars because it was so weird, and had so much there that felt meaningful, even though I don't know what that meaning is.

I will say, if it weren't for the fact that I read this for a book club, I don't know that I would have finished it. It was quite possibly the strangest book I have ever read, and felt so laden with meaning and messages that felt just slightly out of my reach. Maybe that was the point.

Having A as a narrator was incredibly disorienting. She was a character who, more and more, lost sight of who she was. Not that she had a firm grasp on that in the first place, but her grip slipped more and more throughout the course of the book.

There were clearly themes of an obsession with beauty - both inner and outer -- as well as some very clear food issues highlighted mostly through oranges and the non-food-food, Kandy Kakes. As I read the book, I felt more and more like Kandy Kat, chasing after something he was just never going to catch. And, really, I think that was kind of what A did throughout the course of the book too -- trying in vain to obtain something ultimately unobtainable.

I guess more than anything, that was what I took out of this book -- A's attempts at filling the void in her life, despite not knowing why the void is there or what will fill it. I think that's something a lot of people can relate too, a feeling that there's something more out there than you have in the life you're living, but not knowing how to see what that is, or obtain it for yourself. So you settle, find comfort in the routine, tell yourself that things are fine.

Then again, maybe that wasn't one of the messages at all -- I will say I am looking very forward to discussing this book and seeing what comes out of that discussion, and what other people took out of it. While I can't really say I enjoyed the book, there was a lot in it that (for better or worse) stuck with me.

yeah. mhm. yeah. mhm. mhm. yeah

It's a strange book, but not difficult to read. It's smart- building connections between different types of hunger and consumption. It also creates a world that is just like ours but at the same time different.

I stopped reading this. It was barely above awful and took a very long time to start getting into the story. I have too many books on my to be read shelf to waste my time waiting for the plot to develop.

She’s crazy for this one

A very interesting debut post-modern satirical novel, by a talented writer. It reminded me of Margaret Atwood, but was also a totally original voice.