Such a unique, genius, hilarious and interesting book about the double standards of women’s bodies, excessive consumption, and beauty. This was relatable on so many levels. The way it’s written is so poetically beautiful and the narrator is absolutely fascinating. At times I gasped, others I laughed, and others I shook my head in agreement. I’ve never read a book quite like this one but I am SO GLAD I did.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Review will be posted on Instagram and Amazon on pub day and links added to NetGalley.

When I was reading the description of this book before requesting it, I originally thought that it would be a satire or something joke-y, but I thought that its treatment as serious literary fiction was perfect.

Ananda Devi really eloquently plays with the idea of the gaze. Not only do we see an interesting shift in the protagonist's sense of self perception from self hatred to desirability and back again, but we also see a similar journey in the way she is looked upon by others, first as an object of disgust and mockery, and then as an object of desire when Rene enters the picture.

I also really enjoyed the way that the book plays with the idea of consumption. Our protagonist not only consumes food, but is consumed by the social media audience at the end of the book when they bear witness to her self cannibalization.

Devi's prose is fluid, reflective and beautifully written, conveying the full spectrum of the grotesque throughout this book. This will be an easy book for me to recommend to others when it comes out.

this is unlike anything i’ve read before. fromthe first pages, its concept is startling and unsettling in a way that feels both daring and necessary.

the prose lives right on the edge of poetry: beautiful, sharp, and unflinching. Devi writes pain with such precision. this novel is filled with contradictions, tenderness and cruelty, desire and disgust, love and destruction, and those tensions are exactly what make it so powerful.

nearly every character inspired conflicting emotions in me. there were moments when i wanted to drag them out of the pages and lecture them, to shake them for their complicity and cruelty. but that discomfort is part of the book’s honesty. the humiliation, obsession, and casual violence inflicted on the protagonist feel horrifyingly real, and Devi never softens them for the reader’s comfort.

what surprised me most was how much i enjoyed the experience, if that’s even the right word. this is not a comforting novel, but it is a thrilling one in its boldness and originality, its confrontation with bodily autonomy and societal hypocrisy, and its refusal to offer easy moral relief all contribute to something deeply memorable.

it was a rare, electric reading experience that challenged me, unsettled me, and lingered long after i finished. it’s a special book, one i can imagine returning to, not for comfort, but for its fierce clarity and fearless voice.