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A review by oddfigg
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman
5.0
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.
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.