How to be Eaten: a book review
Once upon a time...or now?
A wickedly funny skewering of our hypocritical misogynist societal norms which re-frames several famous (infamous?) fairy tale heroines as archetypes for women in this same society. Women whose only crimes were based on various shades of desire, must navigate “impossible rules” which are deftly exposed and ridiculed. It’s a great read, not especially because it was fun to figure out which fairy tale they’re from. It’s a frame story within a frame story, something (spoiler alert!) you don’t realize this until the very end, which made the ending all the more satisfying.
Great observations about love, economics, meaning, consent, beauty, trauma, poverty, celebrity, and even story telling: “you can manipulate almost everything for the sake of narrative.” Society questions or inducts women for their choices but rarely question the circumstances that brought those choices about; in fact laud or actively promote those circumstances. This was never so obvious as in the story of Ashlee, a “reality TV show” star whose producer more or less groomed her into being the “villain” of the season. I feel like Adelman’s characters would be right at home with some of Margaret Atwoods’ in that they’re resilient, intelligent, and trying to subvert the power structures of society.
This review originally appears in Goodreads.