eating disorders and painful relationships

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	• Eve's Apple: A Novel Jonathan Rosen Picador, 2004 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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Eve's Apple.

Rosen's novel is beautifully written and deeply compelling-but the very qualities that make it worth picking up are the same qualities that should make the reader approach the contents with caution. Eve's Apple is not a story about anorexia so much as it is a story about obsession in general, and obsession's toll on the body in particular. This distinction has important consequences for the gender dynamics of sexuality, power, and love.
Rosen's novel is the only one within the genre of anorexia-related fiction that features a male narrator, a young man named Joseph. However, the male narrator of Eve's Apple is not the anorectic; Rosen's anorectic is Joseph's lover, Ruth Simon. Although Ruth now maintains a normal weight, she starved herself to the threshold of death as a teenager and struggles constantly to stave off a relapse. The novel initially seems to address the residual aftermath of anorexic logic, but as the plot thickens, the reader learns to question Joseph's intentions-and those of Rosen, as well.
Haunted by a troubled past, Joseph is driven by the desire to understand Ruth's anorexia and save her from herself. Joseph asserts that he is acting in the name of love-but close analysis of the text suggests that Joseph's "love" for Ruth is based on a selfish desire to fulfill the part of him that longs to be a hero. Ruth's body-which alternately horrifies and fascinates Joseph-is the foundation of their relationship, but Ruth herself has very little agency as a person. Ruth and Joseph likewise obtain physical closeness, but Ruth's inner world remains an enigma to Joseph and this frustrating distance sends him to the library. Seeking to understand Ruth, Joseph reads up on anorexia. Through Joseph's eyes, Rosen thus discloses many important insights regarding the nature of culture, gender, hunger, and denial.
However, the reader must keep in mind that these insights are viewed through Joseph's eyes. Ultimately, Joseph is forced to acknowledge that, while he may be Ruth's "hero," he has also contributed to her distress by being just as obsessed with her body as she is. Joseph does not want Ruth to be anorexic-but at the same time, he is attracted to the fragility of her slender frame and constantly eroticizes her thin body. Consequently, Joseph ultimately exemplifies how easy one can get close to the truth without really understanding it. Read merely as a detective story that seeks the origins of anorexia, this message may be obscured; but casting a critical eye upon Rosen's plot and symbols will prompt the reader to question Joseph's motivation and insight, as well as that of our own.

Additional information about anorexia in literature is available here: www.livejournal.com/users/lifesize

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Strong first novel

I don't agree with those who find it pretentious or trying too hard. It's a solid debut novel. Unusual topic, well handled without cliches, and characters to care about.

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a wonderful book...

Reviewed by Jennifer Leblanc for Small Spiral Notebook

The cover of the novel Eve's Apple shows the silhouette of a slim woman's body with a fingerprint pattern. Inside, Jonathan Rosen shows us that just as every fingerprint is different, so is ever anorexic's struggle with the disorder.

Ruth and Joseph are Columbia grads living together in New York. Ruth's mother, a self-involved film scholar, and her remarried, benefactor father have been absent from Ruth's life since sending her off to boarding school as a teenager, where her anorexia developed. Joseph, through whose eyes of love and rescue we see Ruth, is still fighting his own demon- the guilt of his sister's suicide that he believes he could've prevented. At first Joseph limits his involvement to watching Ruth's eating habits and reading her diary. When she begins binging and purging he delves deeper into the mystery of anorexia to be her personal savior. Instead of going to the source, Ruth, he goes to the library to read every book on eating disorders, however clinically or culturally dense they may be. But his research doesn't provide any answers for him- it only sparks more questions:

But why were women the shock troops in this war against human
nature? Were they more bound to reproductive nature and
therefore in more conspicuous revolt against it? And why, if
repressive Victorian society had forced submerged appetites into
unhealthy irruptions, did the sexual revolution of the 1960's in
America unleash even more cases of anorexia?

Dr. Flek, a friend of Ruth's mother and former psychoanalyst tries to lead Joseph to the truth, and back to Ruth. After Joseph gets lost in the emotionless theories, Flek tells him,

The language of food. The Primitive language that truly shapes us
and that we can never escape. That is the language you will have to
learn if you are going to understand her... learn the language of the
body. The language of blood and bone and appetite. The body is
our one great book.

After Ruth follows Joseph to the library and watches him research, she begins to trust him the way she never could with anyone else but always wanted. First she has to make Joseph see her again, not the disease, as he is still a frustrated, clueless outsider. Only Ruth can set him straight and tell him that when you are anorexic "You're not thinking. Your body's going Food Food Food, and your brain's going No No No."

At the heart of this book is a man who loves the inside and out of a woman who doesn't know how to love herself. Eating disorders remain a haunting mystery, even to those who are so close, but Rosen shows us that love never hurts.

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Thought Provoking and Well Written

I liked the way Rosen examines anorexia from a boyfriend's perspective and from a researcher's perspective. The narrator of the book, Joseph, who teaches English as a second language to Russian immigrants, seeks to understand his girlfriend's anorexia as diligently as an immigrant seeks to understand his new country. The book was well-written and unusual.

eating disorders and painful relationships

This is truly a story of the other side, the family of those who suffer with anorexia and bulimia. I have been a sufferer for many years and I felt like I could relate to Ruth.
Joseph seemed at times to like her disorder and it drives the reader to continue reading as to why. He is the restless hero. He wants to save her but at the same time he is in awe of her very being. At times I was left wondering if Joseph suffered an eating disorder of some sort because his thought processes were disjointed and he did not make the reader believe that he thought it was wrong.

This is a love story about standing by someone you care about. A reviewer wrote of sexual perversions. Yes, I agree. The mind of an anorexic woman can be full of distorted body images and self-loating. It can drive sex out of the relationship and leave the male feeling left out. I think this is what the author was trying to get at. Sex is a connection with mind and body. With eating disorders you can connect with one of the other but it's hard to let someone know both. Joseph wants to be connected with both Ruth's mind and body. The images are very powerful, from throwing popcorn to the blends of coffee.

I recommend this to anyone coping with the disorder but not to those in recovery as it will be triggering.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Ruth Simon is beautiful, smart, talented, and always hungry. As a teenager, she starved herself almost to death, and though outwardly healed, inwardly she remains dangerously obsessed with food. For Joseph Zimmerman, Ruth's tormented relationship with eating is a source of deep distress and erotic fascination. Driven by his love for Ruth, and haunted by his own secrets, Joseph sets out to unravel the mystery of hunger and denial. This gripping debut novel is a powerful exploration of appetite, love, and desire.

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