Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam-by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family-and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting-until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.Įarly in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion.
Smaller.A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today. Our mothers, whose breasts and hands feed us as babies in their arms, filling us up with comfort and love and nutrients, go through a backwards evolution as we grow from their knees to their shoulders and start to think maybe it’d be better for us if we just starve a little bit. It is no wonder in this novel that with the detox Rachel is experiencing with her mother, she’s constantly searching for motherly love from other female figures in her life. Women are often raised to associate their eating habits with trauma their mother passed down upon them and we often inherit the same relationships with food that our mothers have.
Melissa Broder's descriptors make you crave your favorite foods and take your food triggers head on.
As a person who grew up with more “Should you be eating that?” and “Are you sure you aren’t full?” quips instead of “Yes, have another creamy slice of citrusy lemon meringue pie!” and “Aren’t these thai-glazed chicken drummies just scrumptious?!” I understood what Broder was trying to say. The descriptions of food are glorious and abundant and intentional.
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