You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine: A Novel - Hardcover

Kleeman, Alexandra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062388673 ISBN 13: 9780062388674

Publisher: Harper, 2015

Synopsis

An intelligent and madly entertaining debut novel reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, White Noise, and City of Glass that is at once a missing-person mystery, an exorcism of modern culture, and a wholly singular vision of contemporary womanhood from a terrifying and often funny voice of a new generation.

A woman known only by the letter A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, C, who wants her to join him on a reality show called That’s My Partner! A eats (or doesn’t) the right things, watches endless amounts of television, often just for the commercials—particularly the recurring cartoon escapades of Kandy Kat, the mascot for an entirely chemical dessert—and models herself on a standard of beauty that only exists in such advertising. She fixates on the fifteen minutes of fame a news-celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up his local Wally Supermarket’s entire, and increasingly ample, supply of veal.

Meanwhile B is attempting to make herself a twin of A, who hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C’s pornography addiction, and becomes indoctrinated by a new religion spread throughout a web of corporate franchises, which moves her closer to the decoys that populate her television world, but no closer to her true nature.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of September 2015: Alexandra Kleeman’s mind-bending debut, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, is intoxicating and hallucinatory, full of meditations on food, beauty, relationships, TV and above all, the human body. Get ready to read exquisite, disquieting sentences about your body – “a mouth was a means into a person, but it also offered one of the neatest ways out” – and explore how our consumerist culture dissolves our individual boundaries and makes us hunger to be the same. It’s a strange, surreal world that the three main characters live in – a sort of hyper commercialized and flattened pop-culture world, where employees at the grocery store wear foam heads to appear like their mascot and dads disappear, where TV is watched for commercials and cults run by franchises “believe the quickest route to self-improvement is self-subtraction,” and where food takes on a whole new meaning. The co-opting of identity is at stake in this trippy, incredibly smart novel, yet never has the human body been explained with such intensity, acuity and revelation. Alexandra Kleeman’s ambitious debut will make you crave whatever she writes next.--Al Woodworth

From the Back Cover:

A woman known only as A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, C, who wants her to join him on a reality dating show called That's My Partner! A eats mostly popsicles and oranges, watches endless amounts of television, often just for the commercials— particularly the recurring cartoon escapades of Kandy Kat, the mascot for an entirely chemical dessert—and models herself on a standard of beauty that exists only in such advertising. She fixates on the fifteen minutes of fame a local celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up a Wally's Supermarket's entire, and increasingly ample, supply of veal.

Meanwhile, B is attempting to make herself a twin of A, who in turn hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C's pornography addiction. Maybe something like what's gotten into her neighbors across the street, the family who's begun "ghosting" themselves beneath white sheets and whose garage door features a strange scrawl of graffiti: he who sits next to me, may we eat as one.

An intelligent and madly entertaining novel reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, White Noise, and City of Glass, Alexandra Kleeman's unforgettable debut is a missing-person mystery told from the point of view of the missing person; an American horror story that concerns sex and friendship, consumption and appetite, faith and transformation, real food and reality television; and, above all, a wholly singular vision of modern womanhood by a frightening, "stunning" (Conjunctions), and often very funny voice of a new generation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0062388673
• ISBN 13: 9780062388674
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304