Sarai Walker

I read Dietland after seeing it described as a "feminist novel." If that label offends/bothers you, don't read this book.

Plum's life is filled with the pain and humiliation of being judged and ridiculed because of her weight. After trying every diet in "Dietland," Plum is certain that weight-loss surgery will transform her into Alicia, a thin version of herself with a perfect, happy life. To earn the money she needs for the surgery, Plum spends her days sitting in a coffee shop answering show more "Dear Kitty" emails from young girls wanting help with their own problems, traumas, and pain. Plum tries to respond in helpful ways while expressing her answers in the voice of "Kitty."

Then Plum meets the women of Calliope House and learns the meaning of true life-changing transformation. She also gets drawn into the mystery of a series of violent crimes against men.

Drawing on images from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ("Rabbit Hole," "Drink Me," "Underground," "Eat Me"), but set in the modern nightmare that is women's real lives, Dietland evokes Thelma & Louise, Andrea Dworkin's Woman Hating, and Valerie Solanas's The S.C.U.M. Manifesto (I'll wait while you go look those up :), and is likely to provoke the same amount of controversy both within and outside the feminist community. Those who forget that Dietland is FICTION and/or who can't accept that violent acts might lead to fantasies of violent revenge, will be offended by Dietland. Those who recognize, as a character in the book does, that "From the time we're little girls, we're taught to fear the bad man who might get us. We're terrified of being raped, abused, even killed by the bad man, but the problem is, you can't tell the good ones from the bad ones, so you have to be wary of them all. We're told not to go out by ourselves late at night, not to dress a certain way, not to talk to male strangers, not to lead men on. We take self-defense classes, keep our doors locked, carry pepper spray and rape whistles. The fear of men is ingrained in us from girlhood. Isn't that a form of terrorism?" . . . and shouldn't we employ an army of women to fight it?

My main concern/criticism of the book is the portrayal of women in the military. I understand how it fits into the overall story, but still wish it had been handled differently. I will also be interested in learning how people in the Fat Studies and Fat Acceptance communities view the book. As someone who has weighed 125 pounds for most of my life and hasn't dieted to lose weight since a brief period in college, I'm not really qualified to evaluate the book from the point of view of someone living in a large body or battling with weight issues.

Even without that perspective, once I got a few chapters into this book I couldn't put it down. I wanted to know what would happen to all the fascinating women characters and got caught up in the world-wide obsession with "Who is Jennifer?" I think you will too.

Now I really want to go bake something delicious! show less

Wow, what a complex, incendiary and engrossing read. It could be described as an "anti-beach read", but I mean that in a positive way. I was rooting for Plum from the very beginning. Feminism, fat/body politics, empowerment, terrorism, the diet industry, the beauty industry, gender/identity construction, women's spaces - it's a bold, unapologetic, highly intelligent novel. I loved it.

I'd heard some good buzz about this (probably on NPR), and I'm glad I stuck with it after the first few chapters. I think everyone should read this book, but not many will actually love it. That's okay. You don't have to like it to know that the underlying message is completely true.

**Edited to add:
A few days later, the main message that has stayed with me is that women all over the world are trying to make themselves smaller. Trying to take up less space. That's what we're told over and show more over and over again. You know what? Fuck you. show less

All at once a slow, sensual burn of a gothic novel and a subtle upending of gothic tropes. The story features a doomed family of six sisters all named for flowers, living like colorfully dressed prisoners in a house that is called the "wedding cake," who one by one go to their mysterious fates with only one sister remaining to tell the tale. As the narrator is an artist, the book is filled with lush, evocative images. It is mostly left to the reader to make of this what we will, but men show more certainly do not come off well in this novel. I highly enjoyed it. show less