Review: "Good Enough to Eat" by Lesléa Newman

Good Enough to Eat by Lesléa Newman
Published 1986
★★★

Good Enough to Eat introduces us to Liza, a twenty-something woman living in Boston. She describes herself as a writer, but mostly she's a part-time daycare worker who spends the rest of her time eating and then throwing up her roommates' groceries, making elaborate plans for starvation diets that she'll start tomorrow, and judging other women based on their weight.

Some spoilers below the fold, but this book is older than I am, so if you've made it even this far you've probably either read the book already or have no plans to.

Now. This had been on my to-read list for almost fifteen years, and it was time. And also...I really struggled with the book. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but there are also some caveats, the latter of which are why I left this at three stars.

First, there's the stylistic choice of what I guess I'll call hyperrealism—Liza tells the reader every time she sweats or lets one rip or pops a pimple or has diarrhea. I guess it's supposed to be immersive, but it's not the sort of immersion that I enjoy.

Second...Liza is kind of horrible. This is largely intentional—she's depressed and unhappy with her life, and that impacts the way she interacts with the world and with people around her. I get that, and I would also rather have a character who is flawed than a character who is perfect (and boring). But, gosh, Liza is hard to take, and I'm not sure there was ever a moment in the book when I'd have wanted to be in the room with her, let alone interact with her on a regular basis. See: Liza constantly judging, and internally belittling, just about every woman she sees. She's also the kind of person to think that, as a presumed straight woman (the first half of the book) who has a lot of gay friends, she can use whatever slur she wants to refer to them, which is...fun...and is compounded by her reaction when one of those gay friends calls her a lesbian (she turns up at his work to sabotage him and demand a public apology). And then she has sex in her roommate's bed, and I just...couldn't with her anymore.

That takes us up to about the halfway mark, at which point Liza determines that she is in fact a lesbian and goes about trying to find other lesbians. There was a terrible moment when I thought that the moment Liza came out to herself, her eating disorder would start magically disappearing, and we'd learn that radical-feminism lesbianism cures eating disorders, but then she gets right back to hating her own body and resenting everyone else for having bodies, so...maybe not. But she does manage to decide that she's in love with the first lesbian she meets, who conveniently is willing to help introduce Liza to queer 80s culture and eating disorder resources (because all of the lesbians Liza meets also have current or past eating disorders) and while we're at it lesbian sex.

Reader, I did not enjoy this book. I'm tired. But first, some caveats.

Caveat the first: This was published in the mid-80s. Language was different, and understanding of eating disorders was different, and what was available in queer fiction was different. It wasn't so far off the period when lesbian books involved somebody being murdered at the end, or at least someone being beaten up and/or arrested. By those standards, this is low-key radical—almost none of the plot involves homophobia (only Liza's internalized homophobia); the lesbians who conveniently know everything about eating disorders frankly do have a better understanding of them than some people do forty years later; when Liza gets over her internalized homophobia, she treats being a lesbian as something to be celebrated rather than something negative. I'm sure there were other books doing related things in the 80s, but they've proven elusive.

Caveat the second: Liza is, as we have established, not my future bestie. If we existed on the same plane, I would be ducking around the corner to avoid her, and she'd see the hem of my coat as I went and think nasty thoughts about me for avoiding her (all the while not wanting to talk to me either, so there's that), and then she'd throw in some bitchy thoughts about my body for good measure. However...it's worth noting that the book is doing some interesting things with Liza throughout this. She really has very little self-awareness, which leads her to think, for example, that a small child's mother should give her carrot sticks [instead of cookies] or something. If I had a daughter, I'd never let her get fat (loc. 1350)—conveniently ignoring the fact that she's previously mentioned resenting being given carrot sticks instead of cookies when she was a child. Or, in reference to someone she once knew who lost weight and then gained it back, she thinks I know if I ever got thin, I'd stay that way forever (loc. 2081)...conveniently forgetting that she herself has sometimes lost weight to a point she's happy with, but it never lasts (not least because her weight-loss attempts are generally starvation diets). Does it make Liza more likeable? No. But it really does tell you something about what the book is doing, and how entrenched Liza is in it all.

So—no. I did not enjoy the book, and I struggled to get past my dislike of Liza and the hyperrealism to see the more interesting things the book was doing. And at the same time, it is doing interesting things, so take that as you will.

...but then there's the part where the lesbian sex at the end devolves rapidly into baby kink, and reader. I cannot. Never again.