Reviews with content warning for Bullying - How to Be Eaten

I didn’t really like this book. I did LOVE the discussion it prompted at my library’s book club. Probably my favorite book club meeting because there was a lot to talk about within the themes. But I don’t feel the execution was as good as the premise.

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imstephtacular's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes

4.0

This was strange and compelling as hell. The writing is excellent and I was invested in every character’s story

This felt like Final Girl Support Group meets The Lunar Chronicles with a little bit of the Wayward Children series, all stories I’ve enjoyed.

The ending reveal left me a little underwhelmed, but overall this was powerful and intriguing

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jessereadsthings's review

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Interesting idea, but just ended up being kind of boring.

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punkrockingnerd's review

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dark emotional funny reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The ending was a little off for me, but the small pieces of lives in recovery really make it worthwhile

Seriously, what was the ending trying to say? The women are taking power back by knowing that despite what the media has to say, they know the truth and that's enough? Or, is it all meant to be a warning a la-1984, putting us on the lookout for instances in the real world? I don't know, it's kind of unclear.

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ceallaighsbooks's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“As if life could be packaged up like this, contained, delivered in a few anecdotes, bright and glistening, easy to swallow: all insight, all joke, all moral. As if real life offered any consistent essential truths. As if it were possible for me to explain myself. As if I wasn’t always leaving out the most important parts.”

TITLE—How to Be Eaten

AUTHOR—Maria Adelmann

PUBLISHED—2022

GENRE—contemporary fairy tale retellings; speculative fiction

SETTING—New York city

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—fairy tales, retelling, subversion of fairy tale themes and tropes, storytelling, stories & their impact, experimental narrative structure, dark mystery, therapy & psychology, capitalism, sociocultural misogyny, PTSD & trauma, the harmful nature of uncritical social values & expectations, reality TV, internalized self-loathing, white feminism

“I know people don’t like me,” Bernice says. “But whatever you heard, maybe it’s not the whole story.”

WRITING STYLE—Perfectly suited to the story (especially in *how* each tale was told, like it was being told in two “parts”: the story, and the afterstory or, the “real” story)

CHARACTERS—Perfectly suited to the story.

STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—I LOVE a unique take on fairy tale retellings! Also Gretel’s story 😳 was soooo on point. 🤯 And the Rumpelstiltskin retelling was the best I’ve *ever* found.

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️

PREMISE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

EXECUTION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“But something changes after tragedy,” she says. “It’s like you’ve spent your whole life putting one foot in front of the other, knowing the ground would always be there to meet you, and then suddenly, one day… it isn’t. The bottom has dropped out. The unbelievable happens and you just… fall.”

The premise of this book is genius, first of all. The story is structured like this: five famous/infamous women meet in the basement of a community center in modernday NYC for a group therapy session. Bernice is Bluebeard’s ex. Ruby is Little Red Riding Hood. Ashlee is the Fairytale Princess who gets her Prince. Gretel is Hans’s sister. And Raina… well, you’ll have to read the book to find out who Raina is. Oh and the guy leading the discussion? yeah, his name is “Will”. (iykyk)

And the execution of that premise was *flawless*. This book is by far the cleverest modern fairy tale retelling that I’ve ever read. It has so many layers and pays homage to oral storytelling traditions, western fairytale themes & tropes, the historical context of the Grimms brothers’ fairytale collection efforts, the role of women in said fairytales, the role of women in modern western society and how it’s changed from the society in which these tales were originally “published”, whose voices are heard, fact vs fiction in stories, perspective & bias, and so many more insightful, clever, and thoughtprovoking themes I was just constantly being blown away with literally every page I’m so sorry to have to oversell it like that but there it is. 😂

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with an interest in 1) retellings and/or 2) western fairy tale traditions and themes. Bonus points within for the readers who enjoy contemporary style literary fiction and unlikable characters with whom you are still somehow made to sympathize, and who can read beyond the surface of a story in order to suss out the deeper meanings and messages. If that’s your jam, this book is your goldmine.

“Tonight I will go back home, and they will be there, talking, telling me over and over about how they lived and how they died. Mostly how they died. I will never get to tell them my story, because it’s my duty to listen, because what I do get—isn’t it enough?—by pure, stupid luck, I get to live.”

I’m so sorry that I ever doubted this book. Sometimes my instincts are wrong and when they are wrong they can be very wrong. 🤣 Go read it!

“His tone implied I was crazy. But I was perfectly calm. Day after day after day, I’m calm. A lifetime of reasons to tear myself in half, and I never do.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // fatphobia, ableism, self-harm, sexual predation & victim blaming, invasion of privacy (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter
Love in Color, by Bolu Babalola—I read this just before reading How to Be Eaten and I loved both for similar reasons. Highly recommend.
Helen Oyeyemi
Gregory Maguire
Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold, edited by Carolyne Larrington
Clever Maids, by Valerie Paradiž

Favorite Quotes—

“They write their names on white, rectangular name tags, then press those tags to their chests. The instant they’re on, they begin to peel off, as if the tags themselves understand what the women want most: to be rid of their history, to start anew.”

“I know people don’t like me,” Bernice says. “But whatever you heard, maybe it’s not the whole story.”

“Men don’t have to pretend to be good, I thought. In fact, they’re supposed to be a little brutal.”

“But something changes after tragedy,” she says. “It’s like you’ve spent your whole life putting one foot in front of the other, knowing the ground would always be there to meet you, and then suddenly, one day… it isn’t. The bottom has dropped out. The unbelievable happens and you just… fall.”

“Tonight I will go back home, and they will be there, talking, telling me over and over about how they lived and how they died. Mostly how they died. I will never get to tell them my story, because it’s my duty to listen, because what I do get—isn’t it enough?—by pure, stupid luck, I get to live.”

“Bernice says that prior to tell her story, she had thought the furniture was mostly to blame for making her feel unhinged. What she hadn’t realized was that constantly being dismissed had made her feel that way too. In the aftermath of Bluebeard, she had been a spectacle, talked about but never heard. It was a disconcerting way to be ignored.”

“…the pain grounded me. I sunk into it. It was the only thing I could hold on to when everything else was slipping away.”

“Just because you agree to something doesn’t mean you aren’t being taken advantage of,” says Raina.

“I mean, if love isn’t worth fighting for…” She trails off, tries again. “It’s all part of the process…” she says. “Except when does the process end, you know? When do I get to be in the Ever After stage, where nothing ever happens but happiness?”

“The man believes in the power of narrative. He believes that stories change the world, and that these women deserve to tell their stories and that the world deserves to hear them.”

“This isn’t about changing the past,” says Will. “It’s about changing the future by learning from the past. You don’t think there’s a benefit to sharing stories?”

“My memories come in flashes of feelings, not words: a hard ache in the stomach, the tickle of a fingernail rising up a neck, the hot acid scrape of sour candy on the tongue, of bile in the throat. Details strewn like crumbs down a dark alley, leading me nowhere.”

“To want is to be bewitched, I’ve long thought. If it’s beautiful or sweet, it will ruin you.”

“It’s ridiculous, but I always thought of that photo as the end of your story. It never actually occurred to me that you’d grow up.”

“But soon we were back in our old, stained, ill-fitting clothes, our trashy Section 8 housing, and the frame shifted. People began to question our stories, our motivations, our parents’ motivations.Perhaps we weren’t heroes so much as victims—it was possible, even, that we were victims of ourselves, of our own circumstances, of our own baser instincts. Rich kids are inventive. Poor kids just lie.”

“It’s true, of course: our stories didn’t add up. Also true: the fucking story will never add up.”

“…they carry scythes slung over their shoulders, the crescent blades curved like a witch’s beckoning finger.”

“As if life could be packaged up like this, contained, delivered in a few anecdotes, bright and glistening, easy to swallow: all insight, all joke, all moral. As if real life offered any consistent essential truths. As if it were possible for me to explain myself. As if I wasn’t always leaving out the most important parts.”

“She imagined that eventually she’d pin it all down, record some definitive version, as if a story were a fact you could just get right. But the story kept drifting, ebbing and flowing, some details gaining importance, others receding, memories floating to the surface like seaweed.”

“I can make a story out of anything. I can spin B-roll into TV gold.”

“Talent doesn’t mean as much as people pretend it does,” said Little Man.

“This is the end, I think. Maybe everything is over. Maybe time has stopped. Maybe nothing happens next. Maybe the entire plot has already occurred. What of any consequence could happen now? But, of course, time always ticks forward, no matter the perceived rate; it can’t be stopped; next always happens; it’s happening now; it’s the only thing you can count on.”

“Your mistakes, if you can even call them that, were about hope. Ashlee, you wanted to believe you were in a love story. Ruby, you wanted to be seen the way any kid wants to be seen. Bernice, you wanted to feel special, to be seen for who you were. Gretel, you were protecting your brother. And what did I do? I hurt someone”—her voice shakes—“I hurt someone I loved and for what?”

“For the life you have now,” says Will.

“For the baby,” says Ashlee.

“Those weren’t good reasons,” says Raina. “Those were very bad reasons.”

“His tone implied I was crazy. But I was perfectly calm. Day after day after day, I’m calm. A lifetime of reasons to tear myself in half, and I never do.”

“You can’t change the past, but it’s infinitely reframeable. You can tell the same story over and over a hundred different ways, and every version is a little right and every version is a little wrong.”

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