A delicious book. A young Jewish comic living L.A. is living on calorie-controlled protein bars, having narrowed her identity to her thinness, when a beautiful yoghurt-server unlocks her deepest desires, physical and psychological. Or is it her own gestures, her own dreaming, that leads her to Miriam in the first place? This book has pages and pages of yearning – spiritual, emotional, sexual – and long, lascivious descriptions of food and bodies and sex (and a mix of real, unfolding, and fantasy). I loved it. It was a book that almost felt embarrassing to read, at times, due to its intimacy, and probably because of the aspects I related to (I too used to lunch at Subway in my early 20s because of how specifically you could control the calorie intake). Some folks may find the queer yearning here problematic, in that it’s explored in relation to a psychological lack, but I thought the desire described was genuine (and hot!), and that we shouldn’t be afraid of all the potentially murky depths of motivation for who we are and what attracts us. It was still kept multi-layered, I felt. This book is meant to be gobbled up like food, unashamedly, and that’s what I did! I can highly recommend it, but a CW for eating disorders x
Congratulations on the SOYA awards, Angela. I really enjoyed reading your pieces, especially the flash fiction.
Thanks so much for reading them 🙂
That’s great news about SOYA, Ange. Next year’s yours, for sure!
Unfortunately I can’t enter next year as it’s the year I turn 30!
Adieu to ‘Yoof’…the Qantas Spirit of ‘Yoof’…
Nice effort, Angela. Bigger things coming for sure.