Some books are easily and quickly devoured, as by a greedy child, and enjoyed all the more for the speed of consumption. Others, however, may be eaten with similar speed, but only to arrive more hastily at the end of the meal. The Edible Woman was one of the latter for me. I started on it during our trip up north over the holiday weekend, and gulped down the last half of it in the car Sunday. By the end, I just wanted to see how it finished to end the tediousness. It was like gnawing on a tough pork chop and swallowing the pieces half-chewed just so I can have dessert.
None of this so far sounds like a rave review, but don't let me mislead you; I did enjoy the novel. The transformation of the main character, Marian, is a necessarily slow and deliberate process. This isn't Kafka's Metamorphosis; if she suddenly woke up one morning, engaged to Peter, unable to eat, and unrecognizable to to herself, the effect would be spoiled. The problem is that it took 130 pages to establish Marian's initial sense of self and to begin the unraveling process, another hundred pages to complete the shift from an independent woman to consumed woman, and yet another fifty pages of passive sniveling before we are finally brought back to Marian, first-person and in charge. The middle of the novel was a drag to read, but this was completely appropriate because it truly demonstrates Marian's gradual lack of control and descent into submissiveness. A woman's loss of identity isn't a switch flipped in the night, but a long and painful effect caused by traditional roles. Women are perfectly capable of nurturing their own unique personalities, unless there is a consuming force. Within Marian's central story, there are many minor characters that also serve to illuminate the same concepts regarding gender roles and stereotypes. At times these felt chaotic, but I think that's how they're meant to feel for Marian, as she doesn't know who to follow or even if she should follow. They were a form of misdirection as well, possibly to keep the reader from concentrating too hard on Marian's own transformation which developed into a nice, subtle shift.
The last fifteen pages of resolution are fantastic, although I'm still puzzling through some of the imagery (both this story and Surfacing discuss/show the head being severed or separate from the body, and I haven't quite figured through all of the implications). It's definitely the kind of book I want to sit down and discuss... any takers?