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Milk Fed
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Milk Fed

By: Melissa Broder
Narrated by: Melissa Broder
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$8.99/month after 3 months. Cancel anytime. Offer ends on 29 July 2026 at 11:59 AEST.

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Bloomsbury presents Milk Fed written and read by Melissa Broder.

A scathingly funny, wildly erotic and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex and god from the Women's Prize longlisted author of The Pisces

A STYLIST, INDEPENDENT, THE WEEK AND RED HIGHLIGHT FOR 2021

'Sexy and fun and a little weird ... This riot of carnal pleasure will make you laugh as well as gasp' The Times

'A revelation ... Melissa Broder has produced one of the strangest and sexiest novels of the new year ... Exhilarating' Entertainment Weekly

'A luscious, heartbreaking story of self-discovery through the relentless pursuit of desire. I couldn’t get enough of this devastating and extremely sexy book' Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine.

Then Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox Jewish woman intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam – by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family – and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Melissa Broder tells a tale of appetites: of physical hunger, of sexual desire, of spiritual longing. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche – both sacred and profane.©2021 Simon & Schuster Fiction LGBTQIA+ Creators Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Spirituality Women's Fiction Comedy
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Critic Reviews

Every encounter is written with sumptuous detail, from glutting on nachos to intimate sex scenes (real and imagined), making for a simultaneously uncomfortable and revelatory read
Melissa Broder’s exhilarating, bleakly funny Milk Fed is another study of female appetite … The most eroticised, tender and romanticised writing in this singular novel is of food’
Milk Fed is a rich, sensual comedy about the joys rather than the privations of the flesh, and with a large number of extremely filthy sex scenes… A funny, sexy, romance about transgressive desire and whipped cream
Melissa Border's imagination, which gave us the story of a woman falling in love with a merman in The Pisces, returns with another wonderfully strange story
[An] imaginative story about food, sex and God (yes, all three of those)
Weird, funny and filthy … Milk, motherhood, food, faith, sex and desire are all tangled in a mess of archetypes, delivered with a sarky millennial spin. Milk Fed will be too much for some – too list-y, too vulgar, too solipsistic – but others will delight in its excesses
Deeply hilarious and embarrassingly relatable (Samantha Irby, author of 'Wow, No Thank You')
Milk Fed hits that sweet spot where pleasure and tension intersect, where the sumptuous exploration of sexuality and spirit meets the rigidities of culture and society. Strange and surreal, Broder's writing is a marvel of wit, heart, and thoughtful curiosity about the body and mind and how these things can overflow their boundaries to become utterly new (Alexandra Kleeman, author of 'You Too Could Have a Body Like Mine')
Sin as self-discovery, appetite as insight, transgression as transformation, Milk Fed is at once hilarious and heartbreaking; watching Broder's characters try to love themselves might just make you love yourself.... or at least hate yourself a little less (Shalom Auslander, author of 'Mother for Dinner')
Smart, funny, sexy, and hard to put down. In this fast-moving, deeply compelling novel, Melissa Broder combines an unexpected (and very hot) love story with a sharp-edged examination of body image, religion, and cultural identity (Tom Perrotta, author of 'Mrs. Fletcher')
Melissa Broder goes there and goes there again. Milk Fed is a hilarious and painfully accurate excavation of the female self-gaze, an erotic romp, a hyper witty satire of certain corridors of contemporary American culture and an unstoppable, wickedly seductive read (Dana Spiotta)
Physical hunger, sexual desire and spiritual longing merge in Broder’s funny meditation on appetites
All stars
Most relevant
Poetic and tender descriptions of desire, passion and food. The novel finds desire and passion everywhere, in observant Jewish families as much as a young Jewish agnostic LA city-dweller. Often laugh out loud funny and deeply moving. Slightly slow (and brave) start to the novel graphically describes an eating disorder. For a time it was hard to keep going, but it's well worth it.

Poetry of Desire

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Authors reading their own audiobook is rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. It could have been elevated by a professional but ended up landing flat.

Author reading their own audiobook?

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This story is actually amazing. I bought this months ago and got distracted with other books. Finally started this the other day and I don’t know why I took so long. I didn’t realise how much I needed this book.

I don’t know why I took so long to listen to this

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Incredible, descriptive and at times confronting. Descriptions of food, sex and sometimes both delighted me from beginning to end

Exquisite

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This book is horrendous. Annoying protagonist (who you will hate right off the bat) with an eating disorder and mummy issues oscillates between fantasising about food in lengthy and boring detail, or fantasising about women whilst simultaneously managing to be homophobic. I couldn’t finish it.

So many issues

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.