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.