Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed is an ambitious exploration of desire in all its forms. We meet our narrator, Rachel, in a state of intense repression. She has restricted her eating to the barest minimum, i.e. salads without dressing, small yogurts, etc., while also working out obsessively, in an attempt to burn all of the calories she ingests. Rachel works at a talent management agency in L.A., a job that she feels ambivalent about, while her life clearly centers mostly around her specific eating schedule. Rachel’s therapist suggests Rachel cut off communication with her mother, whose harsh mothering tactics and obsession with thinness are responsible for Rachel’s disordered eating and shame issues. It’s a couple days into this break with her mother that Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at the frozen yogurt shop. Rachel is immediately struck by Miriam, remarking “Above all, she was fat: undeniably fat, irrefutably fat. She wasn’t thick, curvy, or chubby. She surpassed plump, eclipsed heavy. She was fat, and she exceeded my worst fears for my own body.” Rachel is immediately attracted to her, and Miriam’s insistence to make decadent yogurt treats for her fills a hole left in Rachel by her mother. After weeks of fantasizing, Rachel finally begins a sexual relationship with Miriam, that sparks a period of indulgence in every way.
This novel charts the nuanced path of female desire: sexual desire, desire for nourishment, hunger, and the desire to be protected from shame and judgment. Rachel’s hunger suppression is in service of protecting herself from the judgment of others, to make her feel safe from the shame that her mother and our thin-centric society ingrained in her. She remarks of the ultra-thin women she encounters around Los Angeles: “They appeared to be protected—cocooned by an absence of flesh—from judgment, hurt or shame.” She can only temporarily transcend this desire for acceptance by indulging in her desire for Miriam, who in turn gives her permission to indulge in her sexual and food desires, and most importantly, her desire to be cared for and loved. The food scenes in this novel are just as gratuitous as the sex scenes, with pages dedicated to a hearty shabbat dinner at Miriam’s family home, or the spread at a local Chinese restaurant where Miriam and Rachel go on their first date.
The connections between food, sexuality, and spirituality is a really interesting one that Broder returns to again and again throughout the novel. Miriam represents excess to Rachel: she is unapologetically overweight, she indulges all the time, she is overwhelmingly desirable to Rachel, and she is extremely committed to her faith as an Orthodox Jew. Miriam is both physical and sexual excess, but also spiritual excess, and she represents a devotion to faith that is much stronger than Rachel’s own. Miriam is thus the fulfillment of all Rachel’s repressed desires, and Rachel craves the abundance that Miriam represents: her life feels full and she is surrounded by loving and warm family members, an experience that Rachel also deeply craves and is missing from her life. This is what makes their relationship so interesting, as the reader gets the sense that the relationship is like all cups that are overfilled: bound to spill. There is a sense of dread throughout the novel that their mutual indulgence is not sustainable, which adds an important layer of sadness to the otherwise delightful and sensuous romance.
Milk Fed is an exercise in the cycle of desire and the fulfillment of desire. It begins with Rachel repressing her desires constantly, living an imaginative fantasy life, then meeting Miriam and feeling an overwhelming desire that she can no longer repress, then indulging fully in that desire. The novel is at turns sad, funny, and sexy, as the reader gets lost in Rachel’s internal dialogue. It is a rare privilege to read a novel with female desire at its center that so fully attempts to capture all of its complex forms. Broder has such a knack for writing about sensory details and making the reader feel immersed in her world, and Milk Fed is a testament to her literary talent.
Further Reading: Broder is the author of the essay collection So Sad Today, and the novel The Pisces both of which combine her signature sharp wit and sensuality.