Library Journal - Audio
09/01/2022
Adelmann (Girls of a Certain Age) has rewritten classic fairy-tale heroines, and villains, in modern light. The story is dark and twisted and funny. A group of women, all survivors of trauma, meet in a Manhattan group therapy. Bernice, Gretel, Ruby, and Raina were each searching for their own fairy-tale ending, but instead found horrors and broken promises. As the women hear one another's tales, they realize they may have more in common than they first thought. Why were they all brought together? Is it really for group therapy or something sinister? And are they capable of rescuing one another? Readers will enjoy piecing together not only each woman's story, but also using clues to connect the modern women to their more classical portrayals. Adelmann, while sticking to the classic stories, also brings in modern issues that add a new level of danger and subtle discomfort that most readers will feel. Lauren Ezzo brings the women to life, highlighting both their fierceness and their frailty. VERDICT Fans of retold fairy tales will enjoy this latest addition to the genre.—Elyssa Everling
Publishers Weekly
03/07/2022
Adelmann’s funny and poignant debut novel (after the collection Girls of a Certain Age) invokes classic and modern fairy tales to portray a group of traumatized women. Six women, all public figures, join a mysterious group therapy experiment facilitated by the handsome if preternaturally bland Will. Every Friday evening, they meet in a YMCA rec room to drink coffee and share their experiences. First up is Bernice, who was whisked into a whirlwind romance with a tech billionaire nicknamed “Bluebeard” for his blue-dyed beard. Everything was great until Bernice discovered his secret habit of imprisoning and murdering women in his mansion. Then there’s Ashlee, a “survivor” of a Bachelor-esque dating show; and Ruby, who as a child was swallowed by a wolf. Adelmann’s retelling of “Rumpelstiltskin” is particularly good; it involves Raina, the oldest of the group, and includes a stunning revelation during one of Will’s sessions of an imp-human sex scene. In the background is a running commentary about the power structure of narratives (“Morals create a labyrinth of rules geared toward blaming the victim,” says Bernice, quoting a woman who later became one of Bluebeard’s victims). Revisionist fairy tales are nothing new, but Adelmann’s are elevated by accomplished prose and wry humor. It’s a fresh and inventive gem. Agent: Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Union Literary. (May)
From the Publisher
Named a Best Book of May by TIME Magazine, Glamour, and Bustle Highlighted as a Hot New Release by The Washington Post, BookRiot, USA TODAY, Lithub and The Millions “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
"Gorgeously written and mind-bending, How To Be Eaten is fiction as a magic trick: by redrawing these archetypal characters with modern, vivid, and gothic specificity, Adelmann reminds us that, be it enchanting or devastating, our myths remain." —Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir
“In this wildly imaginative and trenchant novel, female characters from mythic fairytales emerge as modern-day heroes capable of reclaiming their lives from the trauma of their past. A deft exploration of trauma, authorship, the power of storytelling, and the healing potential of connection, How To Be Eaten will stun readers page after page, offering an unforgettable, empowering, and above all entertaining tale of reclamation and transformation.”—Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group
“Maria Adelman does more than reinvent the fairytale, she brings it into the twenty-first century, frankenbites and all. From Bluebeard to The Bachelor, Adelmann spins ‘familiar’ tales together into gold. Funny, violent, cutting, and insightful, How to Be Eaten made me want to join this unlikely group of confidants and start confessing my own secrets, just to keep the conversation going.”—Gwen E. Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw
“Maria Adelmann’s debut novel is jagged and daring and darkly funny. Her wit is an exquisite instrument, one she uses to shred the myths by which capitalism and patriarchy exploit and commodify the female quest for love and selfhood. If you’ve ever hate-watched a reality TV show, or struggled with the blithe misogyny of a fairytale, this is the book for you.” —Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories and All the Secrets of the World
"The classic characters transfer horrifyingly well to our times…The book is funny and dark, and poignant, as the characters long to be believed in a world that often sees violence against women as just a myth.”—GLAMOUR, Ten Best Books of the Month
“Each narrative has a strangeness heightened by twists and modern details…Adelmann wants us to reconsider stories we think we know inside-out and see the inequity and terror we’ve ingested from fairy tales. Her most fiendish trick may be one that she shows to the reader long before the characters learn it — an important reminder not to take anything at face value.”—WASHINGTON POST
"a fresh and inventive gem."—Publishers Weekly
“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
“In this modern retelling of classic fairy tales, Adelmann shatters ‘happily ever after’…and brilliantly brings to light the historical exploitation and manipulation of female trauma in the media. With the current fascination with true crime and reality television, this powerful first novel holds up a mirror to the reader and challenges our perceptions of truth.”—Booklist, Starred Review
“It’s a conceit that works beautifully….The novel feels innovative—witty and feminist, too.”—The Center for Fiction
“Shocking, surprisingly humorous, and heavily in tune with modern depictions of feminine trauma and the surprising bonds such experiences can create between wildly different personalities, How to Be Eaten is a richly imaginative read for those who like their fairytales on the darker side.”—The Manhattan Book Review
“After her well-received collection Girls of a Certain Age, Adelmann offers a wickedly imaginative work envisioning fairy-tale characters as members of a trauma support group in contemporary New York.”—LIBRARY JOURNAL
“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
"Adelmann’s debut is a darkly funny, thought-provoking take on what happens after happily ever after."—TIME Magazine
"A sardonic, poignant novel that moves in unexpected directions across each and every page, How to Be Eaten is a whip-smart invitation to reimagine familiar fairy tales in a modern age."—Kerry McHugh, Shelf Awareness
“Adelmann’s feminist debut novel takes the classic fairy tales of our youth and turns them on their head.”—The Millions
“A clever spin on age-old fairy tales.”—New York Post
“Adelmann spins gold…weaving together two high-concept premises into one coherent and complex narrative that pulls off several impressive tricks along the way…The worldbuilding is immersive and original, and she doesn’t reimagine the fairytales she pulls from so much as implode them…The question of what happens to the fairytale characters after the fairytale ends? could easily be taken in a run-of-the-mill direction, but Adelmann answers it in a way that feels genuinely fresh, thrilling, and even self-referential, baking into the novel’s premise the very idea that stories, no matter how often they’re told and retold, can always be broken apart and fashioned into something new.” —AUTOSTRADDLE
“If not for the title (its innuendo), if not for the cover (its brilliant and naughty heightening of the innuendo), if not for the premise (fairy-tale heroines in group therapy for their traumas), then read it for the question at the heart of the whole thing: Can telling your story free you from reliving your story's Maria Adelmann’s book reads quick and popcorny, like a reality show come to life. But it deepens as it goes, peeking at not just the wolves behind the camera, but those sitting, with popcorn on their laps, in front of the screen.”—NPR, Best Books of the Year
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-03-16
Familiar fairy tales retold through the modern lenses of group-therapy sessions and reality TV.
Bernice has just entered the news cycle, the only survivor of a flamboyant tech billionaire/serial murderer who was known for his eccentric obsession with the color blue, which included dyeing his goatee a signature shade of cyan. Gretel’s iconic photo spread—an image of her and her brother, Hans, reunited with their father in the hospital after having been held captive in a house made of candy—is a part of American true-crime legend; as is the hard-to-fathom assault on Ruby and the shabby wolf-skin coat she's made out of its perpetrator. Raina, the oldest of the group at almost 40, is familiar mostly for her famous husband, though her face is vaguely reminiscent of some decades-old scandal surrounding their romance, while Ashlee, the most recent winner of the reality dating show The One, seems to be living out her happy ending in real time. All five women have received the same spamlike email inviting them to work through the lingering trauma of their “unusual stor[ies]” in group therapy led by the genially handsome Will, who exhorts them to Absolute Honesty, ostensibly in order to heal. As the summer passes, the women transcend their initial rivalries and suspicions and become bonded by their unique suffering. It seems Will’s therapeutic dictates are beginning to work, but as the women move past their public victimization and into the identities they would like to build in the aftermath, it becomes clear that Will has one more surprise up his impeccable sleeve. Adelmann travels the well-worn paths of some of the most famous fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm 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.
