This darkly funny and provocative novel reimagines classic fairy tale characters as modern women in a support group for trauma.
In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all.Though the women start out wary of one another, judging each other’s stories, gradually they begin to realize that they may have more in common than they supposed . . . What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them to rescue each other?
Dark, edgy, and wickedly funny, this debut for readers of Carmen Maria Machado, Kristen Arnett, and Kelly Link takes our coziest, most beloved childhood stories, exposes them as anti-feminist nightmares, and transforms them into a new kind of myth for grown-up women.
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Praise
“Even better than it sounds, HOW TO BE EATEN presents vividly real women haunted by their fairy tale pasts in this deliciously angsty debut. Pure fun pulsing with a dark heart.”—Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch
—Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir
—Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories and All the Secrets of the World
“Adelmann travels the well-worn paths of some of the Brothers Grimm most famous fairy tales with stylistic panache and 21st-century verve. However, it's her nuanced consideration of our own culpability that makes this book unique. In the end, Adelmann’s true subject is actually her audience, the great anonymous we who consumes the horrors of violent husbands, ravaging wolves, hungry witches, and made-for-TV love stories with such compulsive demand we never pause to think what might come after the happy ending. Both a meditation on trauma and a sendup of our society’s obsession with scripted reality, this book sings.”
—KIRKUS, Starred Review“A fairy tell reimagining unlike any other you’ve ever experienced…How To Be Eaten is an intriguing take on what it means to exist in the world as a woman in the 21st century and trauma in the digital age. It’s also just a really entertaining read.”
—BOOKRIOT
