I have very mixed feelings about this book. There is a lot of really bizarre imagery that I LOVE & it has that 'futuristic sense of nameless dread' vibe that I can't get enough of. On the other hand, it's kind of tough to get through. It took me QUITE a long time to read this and TBH I ended up kind of skimming in the end. I just feel like this would have made a better short story? Or, and I can't believe I'm saying this, it should have been slightly LESS weird?? I loved the descriptions of the commercials/tv shows & the scenes at the WALLY's supermarket, but it just took a long time to get going and it was a little bit disjointed. 3 STARS. I will read more of her stuff in the future!

Well, that certainly was nine hours of something.

I'm always here for unapologetically "unlikable" women characters, and I think A & B were both in that category for me. Their characterization was complex and sometimes esoteric, but they always felt like people I might know (or hyperboles of people I might know). I definitely got lost in the plot in a few places, finding myself wishing for less surrealism. I loved the exploration of compulsive consumption, especially because it wasn't dismissive. A had a complicated relationship with everything, from visual media to food to cosmetics... and I have those same kinds of feelings. Kleeman writes in such a seductively disturbing way, I would read more from her in a heartbeat.

I appreciate what the author was trying to do here but unlike some of the comparison authors who write in the speculative genre (Atwood, DeLillo etc.), Kleeman wrote her characters in such a way that they were so detached from the reader. A little difficult to care about the outcome or feel compelled to read further.

I really wanted to rate this higher, but as I was reading it and kept thinking I just want this to be over, so I figured I couldn't fake it. Generally I like this kind of thing, but this one didn't work for me. She certainly had some points to make, but the 'grand finale' I was waiting for, didn't materialize :(

I thought it was only fit for my first ever review to be for a book I truly hated.

I hate-read this book. I was filled with an intense yearning to mark it as DNF, but was mistakenly encouraged by another review that half-heartedly claimed the plot picked up in the last third of the book. Spoiler alert : it doesn’t. It feels almost like cheating to make this book as read for all the long-winded passages I skimmed over (do not get me started on the inane amount of attention the Kandy Kakes commercials received). A word of advice for potential future readers: if you are reading this book and you’re unsure if you like it or not - you don’t. It’s unenjoyable and I wouldn’t recommend wasting your time attempting to like it.

So.
I came to this book based on a recommendation in a podcast I happened upon. The reviewer named 3 other books that I adored and then recommended How To... so naturally, I grabbed it and started reading.
About 50% of the way through, I realized that I had no idea what it was about or what exactly was going on. All I knew was that it was creepy and disturbing.
I finished feeling exactly the same. I think the author wants me to ponder: how I see myself? how I think others see me? my relationship with food? consumerism? community? reality shows? big box stores? All of the above? None of the above? Who knows??
Other reviewers mention it being hilarious. I don’t get that, like, at all. The protagonist worried me, saddened me, and pissed me off, but I never found her funny.
The book is beautifully written. Seriously, stunning. I kept reading because of that, even though I was uncomfortable the entire time. Maybe that was the point as this is, by far, the longest review I have ever written for any book. I will not soon forget it, and I’m still not sure if that’s good or bad.

Like what you see? The full review is on my blog: http://shelfstalker.weebly.com/shelf-stalker/you-too-can-have-a-body-like-mine-alexandra-kleeman

I’ve started off the year with an exceptionally strong crop of books and this book did not let me down in that respect. Also, grab me a Krispy Kreme, ‘cause this book made me HUNGRY!

Beyond calling this literary fiction, it’s a strangely unclassifiable novel, and yes, it is a novel, just in case you were misled by the title into thinking it was just another déclassé motivational workout guidebook by some celebrity with an awesome bod that you’ll obviously never imitate. It couldn’t be further from that, but we’ll get there, hold on a minute!

Main character A has a best friend and roommate B and a boyfriend C. Her life seems pretty stable but as we learn more about her, she becomes unglued—B is basically her double and is looking and acting more like her everyday. C is more interested in TV and the big tension in their relationship is a dating reality show called That’s My Partner! that C wants to apply for but that A dislikes and vows that she’d never be a participant on. The book is broken into three sections which chronicle A’s journey to find herself, or find the people who used to live across the street, or find Kandy Kakes. What is it that A really wants? I'm still not sure I know.

Obviously body image plays into this book, but it wasn't in the obvious ways that I expected. A is starving herself—ghosting herself—long before the third section of the book that I won’t give away here, but is it an attempt to erase herself from her life? To stop participating? To differentiate herself from the other consumers around her? Bodies also felt very alienated in this book—they were always being divided or looked at only as parts of the whole.

​Take the game show, That’s My Partner! In the first round, couples are asked to identify their loved one based on magnified features—one eye, one shoulder, one kneecap, stuff like that. Would you recognize your boyfriend based on photos of men’s elbows? Your wife? Your child? You think now that of course you could, right? But give it a moment. We rely so much on faces and the whole of the person—could you really recognize just that one little part detached from the rest? And what if you were sure and you picked someone else’s ankle? How would that feel? How would your fiancé feel? How well do we really know the people who we think we know so intimately, and how well can you possibly know someone? Would you even recognize your own body parts out of the lineup? I think that would be the real challenge.

So then you have to think about how well you know your own body, which is a stand in for the entirety of your being. I just start wondering, who am I, really?

This novel is a smorgasbord of literary deprivation and starvation. I couldn't get enough.

Kleeman has such interesting ideas and this was only her debut novel! I can’t wait to see where she’ll go from here.

3.5. I really loved the parts of the book that I liked and really couldn’t get into the parts I didn’t.

3.5, rounding up because I keep thinking of it.