Cover Image: You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

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Member Reviews

If this Book turns into a Tv show, I will watch it!
Powerful messages to women, it makes you want to fight back.
Loved it!

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<img src="https://lauraeatsbooks.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/img_20170726_140538_873.jpg" class="size-full"/><b>3 Star Review for Netgalley </b><br>A lives in an unremarkable two bed apartment in an unnamed city with subletter B, who is slowly making herself into A. A is obsessed with an advertisement and her neighbours who she watched disappear from their home, sheets over her head. She works as a proofreader, taking pride in her ability to disregard meaning in any text. Her diet consists mainly of oranges, which she tears apart in front of the mirror with her teeth. Her boyfriend, C, provides much needed stability for A, but his own obsession with a reality dating show and pornography throws the A' s feeling of the unreality of the relationship into stark light.<br><br>I loved so much about this book, particularly descriptions of food and eating, the masking of the real, ugly face with beauty products and make up that "reveal" a more polished face that was potentially there all along and the descriptions of her experience of watching television. However, as A' s relationships crumble and she becomes involved with the church of conjoined eating, I felt what made the book interesting disintegrated. It has great ideas, but I often find such books would be better as short stories or novellas.<br>Despite the 3 star rating, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in fiction dealing with the body and commodification under the conditions of late capitalism. This is something I am interested in, but I felt it just didn't sustain my enjoyment of the novel itself.

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I had read a great number of reviews about this eccentric book, but perhaps it was a little too quirky for my liking. There are major similarities with Chuck Palahniuk in terms of the exaggerated style of writing and general shock factor, unfortunately it did not seem to deliver. The characters were undeveloped and there seem to be a lot loose ends at the end of the book such as what actually happened to B and C? While I can understand the moralistic nature of the story, attacking the usage of food as a means to control people, there seemed to be something missing.

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I thought this was glorious. A biting satire of millennial life that was so close to true before veering towards the absurd. Kleeman's discussion of disordered eating was especially excellent, especially as this was written both before and across the Atlantic from "clean eating". I enjoyed this far more than Heart Goes Last or Worst Person Ever and am sad that it seems to have sunk without a trace a couple of years ago. I was very surprised to discover this after reading and questioned why it was on Netgalley now (an extraordinarily late paperback it seems). The final quarter doesn't work but the first half is near perfect.

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Do you ever have this feeling about a book, just from looking at it that you gonna love it? I had this feeling with You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. When I first seen the cover, the original dark blue one, and read the title I knew I had to read it. I even ordered it, but the book never arrived. And maybe if the book arrived then I would love it, maybe then was a time when I was in a state of mind that would love and deeply appreciate this book. But now, when I finally read this book, I didn't love it. I liked it, but it wasn't the love I was expecting.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine seems like a bizarre book when you take it at face value. The story is crazy and ludicrous. It's about A, who lives with B, and has boyfriend C. B seems to become more and more like A. C loves TV, and spends most of his time watching TV shows. A starts to lose her identity, she doesn't know who she is, where she starts and where she ends. And she's surrounded by strange things. Like Kandy Kake commercials, which descriptions are mind melting. And TruBeauty cosmetics commercials. And That's My Partner game show. And Wally's supermarket with ever-changing displays and carefully studied buying process of consumers. And some kind of religious cult that dresses in white sheets called New Christian Church of Conjoined Eaters.

Underneath this peculiar world and A's struggles in it, the book is presenting the postmodern dystopia. It is truly a novel tackling a questions in what direction are we going, how much consumerism and conformity are taking over individuals and their individuality. A's world is our world. We buy things we don't need. We watch the mind numbing entertainment. We try to look like the beautiful people on TV. We try to look like someone else. We try to be someone else. Where are we, where we start and where we end? Do we really want the stuff we buy and do? Who are we?

The book is food for thought. It must be read carefully. Choose the time when you read this book wisely. If you're not ready to take such a strange story in, and see beauty in it, don't read it just yet. Wait for the right moment. Read it when you most vulnerable and welcoming of new ideas wrapped in a strange paper.

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A lives a humdrum life in an unnamed American city. Her roommate is called B and A feels that B is trying to take over her life. A’s relationship with her boyfriend C is compartmentalised like the rest of her life. A’s job is monotonous and doesn’t stimulate her. As A drifts through life obsessing about bodies and the people in the house opposite she grows resentful of B’s apparent neediness and eating problems. She also becomes obsessed with Kandy Kakes and a supermarket chain called Wally’s, but when she discovers a link between everything happening around her things take a really odd turn.

It is so hard to describe this book and even harder to like it. There are elements of excellent writing, the parts describing the body and eating are written in beautiful prose. However the whole narrative is so disjointed and confusing that it does not satisfy. I feel the writer was caught up in her own cleverness and the book tries to mimic other existential writers works. To those who enjoy this sort of fiction it will be a hit, to me it just feels pretentious

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