#zoengombane

This was a deeply unrestrained and disturbing novel, probably because it felt so real. It makes you really think about our roles in our communities and society at large, what is expected of us, of women, regardless of what you're willing and able to give. It makes you think about what is acceptable, what behaviours are intolarable, the limits of one's freedom in regards to the men around them, the older people around them, the rules that govern their lives. And it really makes you feel how a person's life can be made small and put under a miscroscope, really expendable and actually in danger. All wrapped up in vegetarianism and dreams and sex and violence. Very good, I have nothing more to say.

Some books are classics for a reason.

This is one of the most slow moving, thoughtful, quiet and serene books I've ever read. Which is so odd because I suppose I didn't think I associated summer with slowness or quiet. But here, as it's set out in front of me, an island, the ocean, long walks, boats out at sea, isolated family, simple shared meals, alone in nature, thunderstorms on the horizon, summer can be truly quiet and serene even in its intensity.

I am convinced nobody can write hunger quite like Melissa Broder can. This is only the second time I've read her work but I've never come across characters that lack and want the way hers do. Whether it's food or love or a mother or freedom, she writes yearning like it's starvation, urgent, critical, painful, dehumanising. She explores the hunger literally in this book, with a character who has a complicated relationship with food and by extension with her mother, and I enjoyed it very much.

Great book, excellent writing, maybe a smidge talky in parts, but the parts that were good were really really good, and they left me truly mesmerised.