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    The Appetites of Girls
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    The Appetites of Girls
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    The Appetites of Girls
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Appetites of Girls

    Written by Pamela Moses

    Narrated by Sandy Rustin, Suzy Jackson, Heather Corrigan and Tavia Gilbert

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    For the audience that made Commencement a New York Times bestseller comes a novel about women making their way in the world. 

    Self-doubting Ruth is coddled by her immigrant mother, who uses food to soothe and control. Defiant Francesca believes her heavy frame shames her Park Avenue society mother and, to provoke her, consumes everything in sight. Lonely Opal longs to be included in her glamorous mother's dinner dates-until a disturbing encounter forever changes her desires. Finally, Setsu, a promising violinist, staves off conflict with her jealous brother by allowing him to take the choicest morsels from her plate-and from her future. College brings the four young women together as suitemates, where their stories and appetites collide. Here they make a pact to maintain their friendships into adulthood, but each must first find strength and her own way in the world. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 26, 2014
    ISBN9780698163935
    Unavailable
    The Appetites of Girls
    Author

    Pamela Moses

    Pamela Moses received a B.A. in comparative literature from Brown University and an M.A. in English from Georgetown University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young children. The Appetites of Girls is her first novel.

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    Reviews for The Appetites of Girls

    3/5

    7 ratings21 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I very much enjoyed this book and while there's nothing entirely new here it was engaging and quite captivated me. Mother's loom large whether they are imposing their will forcefully or emotionally absent and food becomes a hiding place, a battle cry, an object of denial or fear. Still it's clear that each of the women were searching for happiness, peace and joy. I won't spoil but I'm glad they found it. I suppose many women will see themselves in the characters and I admit that I most identified with Francesca. Setsu was the one who took longest for me to engage with but once I did, I understood her and hoped for her happiness. Opal broke my heart with her story so watching her come full circle was wonderful. From the start I rooted for Ruth to find her voice and exercise her own agency and it while it was difficult to watch her fits and starts along the way, it was satisfying altogether when she did. Above all, I enjoyed watching each woman finally value herself and her right to her opinions, decisions and happiness.My favorite passage from the book is by Fran: "Some lessons take longer to learn than others. If I had obeyed my own stubbornness, I could have gone a lifetime without ever learning mine. But as I gazed into Jonathan's eyes on the morning we were married, I understood with a certainty that steadied even my bridal jitters that I had been waging futile battles, seeking strength in empty places"I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a strong story about women. I'll also be looking forward to reading more from Pamela Moses in the future. I won this book in a giveaway from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. Loved loved loved it. It made me feel every single emotion, sometimes simultaneously. That's a good book, you know? I want every female I know to read it.
    • 4/5
      Women have such a complicated relationship with food and body image. We are bombarded from a young age with pictures of societal ideals that are unobtainable for many, if not most, women. Men see these ideals and look for a reflection of the same in the women to whom they are attracted. So it's no wonder that food has become a battleground. But it's not just about fat versus thin, curvy versus lithe. Tied into this, for many women, food and eating is a power struggle, one of the few ways in which they can control how the world views them. They can overeat and become invisible, trying to fill a gaping emotional hole, or they can pick daintily at their food, sometimes eschewing it altogether in an effort to exert control over the one thing in their lives that no one else can touch. What we eat and how we eat can be so emotionally freighted, as is the case in Pamela Moses' debut novel The Appetites of Girls. Ruth, Setsu, Francesca, and Opal come together as college suit mates their freshman year. At first blush, they look as different as it's possible to be but underneath the veneer of varying life experiences and family relationships, they face many of the same issues and insecurities. Ruth grew up in New York, the children of immigrants striving for perfection. Her mother dominated her life, pushing food on her, choosing her path in life, and deriving her own self worth from Ruth's successes and failures. The constant overbearing competitiveness was hard on Ruth and only in stuffing herself full of food can she find some escape from the failures she feels so deeply. Francesca also grew up in New York but she grew up in wealth and comfort, expected to conform to her socialite mother's expectations of beauty and hospitality. Overeating is a way for her to buck these expectations and to mask the hurt she feels on the rare occasions she finds disappointment reflecting at her. Opal grew up with a single mother who followed men around the world, trading on her sexuality. She was, in many ways, more a pet to her mother than a child and her mother indulged her, thinking it adorable that her daughter wanted to grow up so quickly, not seeing the danger for a young girl looking for love and acknowledgement wherever she could find it. When this results in something horrific, Opal finds her only source of power in the stringent food and exercise rules she follows, bending her body to her own desires, not the desires of the men around her. Setsu, adopted as a young girl, is musically gifted but when her parents adopt an older brother who is also a talented musician, his petulant need to be the star and his enormous appetite force Setsu into the background where she hovers in near invisibility, wanting desperately only to please. She starts eating like a bird so that there is more for her brother to consume and, in his shadow, quits her violin despite real promise, and her parents allow and encourage her almost complete effacement. When these four damaged young women come together in college, their habits are already deeply ingrained. Even as they forge the connections to each other that will last long past college, they not only cannot break out of their destructive patterns, but they don't even share the very deepest of their hurts with each other. They do change over this seminal four years and try to forge new identities but without acknowledging the underlying issues that continue to haunt them: inability to accept and love themselves, to allow themselves to trust other people, and to take control of their lives and live them free of the expectations of others. But without looking into their own souls and confronting their pain, they will not be able to change and grow into healthy and happy adults. Ruth narrates her sections in the first person while the other three women's sections are third person. In addition to the rotating narration, the novel is divided into three separate sections, a pivotal moment in the shaping of the appetites of each of them in adolescence, their college years together, and then their life after college. Each of the women has very different relationships with her family and with men which results in different attitudes and reactions to food and hunger. Two of them are filling a hunger and two are denying it but each is suffering emotionally because of her actions. Moses has written a psychologically astute novel about what drives women to eat or to withhold food from themselves. She examines the subtle effect of conforming to men's ideals, how those ideals have become so ingrained in our culture as to be universal across the sexes, and the notion of sexuality in the relation to all of this. The issue is handled subtly but it is still very clear in the context of each woman's struggle and it can make the reader uncomfortably, gut-churningly self-aware. The novel is incredibly thought provoking and there's a despair and a darkness to the narration that adds to the difficulty of the subject matter. But the ending is too easily resolved and it would have been more satisfying to see each of the characters claim their new resolutions once they have their revelations about the damage they have long been doing to themselves but instead we jump into the future by several years and are just told how they've changed. This minimizes the power of the narrative a bit but the overall feel and message of book is a good one, and the challenges and hurts the women all face are still prevalent today.
    • 2/5
      I did not really find any of the girls childhood stories that interesting. However, after wading through the first about 110 pages, the story picks up to the present where the girls are together. It does get a little better but still not enough to make me excited. In fact, the details of this book are not that memorable and neither are the girls. Also this is another book that suffers from the characters and food. Food does not always make things better. Whether it is a food memory or associated food scent connected to emotions. If the story is not more grounded with intriguing characters that become more like friends than food can not save it. Although I did see a small glimmer of hope in this book and do expect that there will be good things to come from new author, Pamela Moses.
    • 4/5
      Seemingly a roman a clef about the lives of four roommates at Brown (where the author went to school, as well as attending Georgetown for grad school). Ruth, Francesca, Opal, and Setsu have in common difficult childhoods causing issues in body and self esteem. Overbearing mother, Park Avenue snob mother, neglectful mother, adoptive parents favoring adopted son over daughter: it's a litany of bad moms and seemingly insignificant dads, yet each roommate only seems to blossom when they find the right man in the end.Best told and most painful story is that of Setsu, whose older brother Toru is a disgustingly self centered evil monster whose envy and fear cause Setsu to abandon her music. Then she fall into the arms of another control freak, her boyfriend James. ARGH. Setsu: wake the hell up willya???I enjoyed the read but can't really recommend its meager merits.
    • 3/5
      This is a novel about 4 young women and their personal struggles from their childhood throughout their college years. The book explores how their early years affect and mold the women they have become and the inner demons they must overcome. Many of their personal issues revolve around their relationships with their family members and relationships with food. Although the characters felt a bit flat and underdeveloped, the book is a relevant commentary on how our current world affects young women.
    • 4/5
      I find it funny that it is always women whose lives revolve around food. This book shows that we either eat to deal with emotions or starve ourselves to deal with them. I sure alot of women will see them selves in this book at some time in their lives.
    • 4/5
      I really liked reading "The Appetites of Girls". It was a nice and enjoyable read. All four characters in the story were intriguing, unique and relatable. I loved the diversity in personalities, and back stories. Best of all is the friendship and commitment all four girls have for one another regardless of their differences, and individual trials and difficulties from life.
    • 3/5
      An interesting premise, but not what I was expecting. I thought this would be more of the light, women's fiction genre, and it was going more for literary fiction, which didn't work for me with the topic being explored. May have enjoyed it more if I had picked it up expecting a more serious approach.
    • 4/5
      I love me some women's fiction and this one is the epitome of that genre - which I loved! The Appetites of Girls is a riveting story about four young women who meet in college and promise to stay in touch no matter what. Of course life gets in the way, but that is the beauty of the story - the ways in which these four women navigate the ups and downs that life throws at them. We get to know these women from adolescence, college, to adulthood; and we get to know what they think of one another through Moses' use of alternating points of view (as a means for dividing the book up). The book explores friendship, love, sexuality, body image, and so much more in such a nuanced and organic manner that you can't help but easily connect with these four women. Reading their stories is akin to reading your own journal (or your best friend's journal). I absolutely loved this book!
    • 3/5
      The Appetite of Girls by Pamela Moses unfortunately was not a book I found myself enjoying, the title probably should have been a clue. Moses gives the readers a look into the lives of four girls from very different backgrounds; Ruth who is coddled and uses food to soothe, Francesca is a larger girl from Park Avenue and uses food to upset her mother, Opal is the lonely one, longing to be accepted, and Setsu gives her brother everything. The reader meets up with Ruth, Francesca, Opal, and Setsu when they become suitemates at Brown University and the reader learns more about each young woman and their individual mother issues and food issues, finally we meet up with them again as women in the workforce. Moses does show these four women from three major life stages and while the book should have been an intriguing look into their respective lives and the pressure young women feel, simply could not find myself interested in the girls or their lives. With that stated, The Appetite of Girls is exceptionally well written, and I would recommend reading other reviews as I may be in the minority with my dissenting view.
    • 4/5
      I live in a small town that I returned to after leaving 53 years ago after High School. In my group of friends now there is no one out of the 10 women that does not have a challenging relationship with food. This is the reason that I was interested in reading "The Appetites of Girls". Thank you for writing a book that directly showcases how we carry our interaction with food through our whole life and still manage to hold on to each other. This is a Novel that I will pass on to everyone and hopefully will bring soothing recognition to someone. Thank you LibraryThing for the ARC.
    • 3/5
      I received this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. It's the story of four young women who are placed in the same suite for their freshman year at Brown University, and the relationships they forge with food and each other.I was not impressed with this book...it seemed very formulaic to me, and each of the characters represented a certain stereotype of women. I do like how each chapter of the story was focused on one of the four characters and how they were all woven together, but I didn't really feel very connected with any of the women in the story. It's not a fantastic read, at least in my opinion...but it's certainly not a terrible book either.
    • 3/5
      While I found The Appetites of Girls to be a quick summer read, there were certain aspects of the novel that felt heavy-handed to me: Setsu's seemingly innate subservience bothering me the most as it also seemed stereotypical, for one. Then, the (spoiler) seriously traumatic event that Opal went through was simply glossed over. These aspects of the story felt disproportionately addressed, in my opinion. Many younger women face difficult issues while coming of age, but this novel seems to blow them up into melodramatic proportions more often than not. It held my attention, but I didn't love it.
    • 4/5
      This book read very smoothly and gave large glimpses into the complicated relationships that many young women of different backgrounds face with regards to love as reflected in their feelings about their bodies and of course, appetites. Opal and Ruth are extraordinarily well done characters in which Moses weaves a narrative that makes you wonder more about their mothers, families and childhoods. Ruth's mother, in particular, is the kind of character that is given a depth conveyed by just a sentence or two- we immediately feel her enormity in Ruth's life and stomach. Opal's transformation from one notion of femininity to another is well described and littered with characters that enhance her story's development. Her brief foray into a "forbidden" love is expected but with a twist that makes it seem that all of Opal's work towards becoming the kind of woman she wants to be may be for naught.The other two characters, Setsu and Franchesca, were not well developed, particularly Setsu. Franchesca is given a revolutionary attitude in regards to food and body that does not seem to match the author's pace in her descriptions and writing regarding her transformation. You can be left wondering how Franchesca went from her childhood self to her young adult self and the narrative gives no strands to link them.Setsu in particular is poorly developed and the characters in her mini-world, namely her parents, are grossly overlooked. We could try to draw some symbolism from their lack of attention towards Setsu and the lack of attention the author gives them, but its a strained and incomplete symbolism. Setsu's ending is disappointing and colored the last several chapters of the book for me as I waited for her to have something real and final, which she was never given. While reading the book, it is clearly stated that Ruth and Opal are white, and it seems the Franchesca is as well. It is a shame that the one character with ethnic diversity is so shortchanged. At one point there is an excellent opening in the story for an elaboration on Setsu's adoption and food, and it is completely passed over, which may cause readers particularly attentive to this type of criticism to frown and wonder.Four stars for an excellent idea, good execution, and excellent development of two main and several side characters. One star gone for overlooking Setsu and the poor pace of Franchesca's development.
    • 4/5
      This is an engaging, multi-layered debut novel by a talented writer. Four young women, whose disparate backgrounds have been explored in the early chapters, meet for the first time as suitemates at the beginning of their freshman year at prestigious Brown University. This arbitrary assignment provides a friendship that extends throughout their years at Brown and into adulthood. The role of their eating habits, body images and views of food are examined in their relationships with their families, especially their mothers, and with each other. I probably would have overlooked this book had I seen it on a shelf due to its cover and title, which do it an injustice in my opinion.
    • 3/5
      This book felt very similar in tone and concept to Courtney J. Sullivan's Commencement, although without the disturbing and well-done sex trade angle in the latter book. That issue is replaced here by eating disorders. I don't mean to sound flippant, but that's really how it felt when reading this book. It all felt a bit too contrived. It also, frankly, felt like chick lit masquerading as literary fiction. I love chick lit, and I love literary fiction, but this one felt like it combined the less interesting stereotypical qualities of each genre.
    • 3/5
      Just as Tolstoy suggests that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, this book shows that there are many unique ways for someone to have an unhappy childhood. The first section of the book, covering each girls childhood, was almost painful to read because all four of the girls' parents messed up so terribly. I was excited to begin the next section, reading about the four girls in college, because I hoped they would all help each other overcome the challenges they each faced. Instead, they lived together, but seemed like ships passing in the night. They never allowed each other to fully see their struggles and didn't always see their own challenges clearly. This section was also a bit painful because each girl made mistakes because of the way her childhood had shaped her.

      Even the last section, where each girl reached a turning point, was a bit too much about mistakes and regret for me to really enjoy. Most of these sections are about things turning out poorly yet again with only a few brief pages devoted to each of the girls having a revelation which could become a turning point in their lives. I did love seeing these four girls grow and develop. I thought this was a fascinating character study and I felt like I really got to know all four girls as complex human beings with flaws and strengths. However, I was very disappointed by how little they interacted with one another and personally would have liked to see a bit more time devoted to the time period during which they each begin to change.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey.
    • 4/5
      When I saw this book on LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers list this past spring, I knew it would be right up my alley (she said, while having an afternoon snack). So, thank you to LibraryThing, and to Putnam Books (Penguin Group) for the chance to read and review an advanced copy of The Appetites of Girls, the debut novel by Pamela Moses.From the Penguin website:Self-doubting Ruth is coddled by her immigrant mother, who uses food to soothe and control. Defiant Francesca believes her heavy frame shames her Park Avenue society mother and, to provoke her, consumes everything in sight. Lonely Opal longs to be included in her glamorous mother’s dinner dates—until a disturbing encounter forever changes her desires. Finally, Setsu, a promising violinist, staves off conflict with her jealous brother by allowing him to take the choicest morsels from her plate—and from her future. College brings the four young women together as suitemates, where their stories and appetites collide. Here they make a pact to maintain their friendships into adulthood, but each must first find strength and her own way in the world.The book is divided into three “Parts,” and also has a short prologue and epilogue. Part One introduces each of the girls at a critical point during childhood or early adolescence. Part Two details their meeting at Brown University as suitemates, the development of their friendships, and some of the significant experiences they have during those college years. Part Three explores the different paths they take after graduation. Within each Part, there are four long chapters, each narrated by one of the four main characters.The primary narrator is Ruth; the prologue and epilogue are both in her voice, and the chapter subtitles that indicate who narrates never say “Ruth’s Story,” but always “My Story.” In spite of this, the book feels fairly well-balanced among the four characters. Their voices aren’t vastly different -- which might be seen as a minor “debut novel flaw” -- but their personalities and interests are distinct enough that after a few paragraphs, I easily settled into that character’s story and perspective.It’s probably clear from the description that this is character-driven literary fiction. Most of the “action” centers around university life and friendships, and family relationships. The novel doesn’t have a “plot” so much as incidents and vignettes, weaving together, and then shifting focus from one chapter, one narrator, to another, and so on.Moses’s decision to use first-person narration for each of the characters seems like a wise one to me. It brought an immediacy to all four young women’s experiences that made me feel like I was right there with them through everything. I wanted to speak up for them, and defend them: Ruth’s mother really needed to get off her daughter’s back, and Setsu’s brother made me so angry, I wanted to give him a smack. During the girls’ happier moments, I felt like I was celebrating with them, watching from a quiet corner of the room.The themes surrounding food resonate throughout the novel, of course -- eating with loved ones, bingeing alone, rewarding oneself with sweet things, sometimes overeating, other times denying oneself the tastes one most desires. The actual appetites of the characters do play a role in some of the situations, but they do not yearn only for food. It is often so difficult to discover those things that bring us true happiness, that make us feel truly fulfilled. While we’re looking for “the real thing,” we might get sidetracked by lesser pleasures, or try to fill that empty feeling, at least for a moment, with things that are close at hand: chocolate, chips, cheeseburgers. As this novel illustrates, the real appetites of many girls and women are vastly more complicated, and can’t be satisfied with only dinner and dessert. In the stories of Ruth, Francesca, Setsu, and Opal, Pamela Moses has given us four young women who had to learn what they were truly hungry for, and then decide how they might attain it. Their journeys are full of missteps and regrets, some successes, and lasting friendships. I loved spending time with them.
    • 4/5
      The Appetites of Girls follows four women from childhood through early adult-hood. They meet in college, where they are suitemates in their dorm. Each girl has a distinct personality and a distinct relationship with food to go along with it. Two of them eat too much and two eat too little. The four women were well drawn characters. I did wish some of the secondary characters would have been developed more, especially Setsu’s parents. They were just blurry stick figures in my mind. Speaking of Setsu, she was so frustrating – I wanted to beat her about the head and shoulders. I consider it the mark of a good author if a book can stir up strong emotion in me like that, even if it is a negative emotion. I felt strongly for all four of the women in fact and could understand why each of the them turned out the way they did.The book is organized in chronological order and alternates between each girl’s first person view point. It takes jumps forward in time – first a section from their childhoods, then college and so-on. This was an effective structure that held my interest. It was like I was checking in and catching up with them at each point in their lives.With four diverse main characters, I think that there will be aspects of one or more of these women that a reader will relate to, making this a book that most everyone should be able to enjoy.
    • 4/5
      I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.The Appetites of Girls is described as a novel about four college friends who reunite about a decade after their graduation. It is more like a collection of short stories with overlapping characters than a fully developed novel. In a way, it reminded me of Kissing in Manhattan, which, however, was upfront about being a book of interconnecting short stories. In the first part of the book, we learn about the lives of each of these young women as children. These narratives don’t bring up to the moment the four enter college. Instead, they merely tell us about the formative experiences of their childhoods. In the second part, the four arrive at college where they are assigned as suitemates. There are four stories, one for each year of their four years on campus. While the characters’ story lines are more interconnected here, each story focuses on one character.In the third part, the author writes about the lives of each of the characters after college. While the characters keep in touch with one another, mostly via monthly phone calls, once again each of the stories focuses on one character. Not all characters are created equal. One of the characters, Ruth, serves as narrator. However, the book isn’t consistent about this because each of the other characters tells her own story, revealing things that aren’t known to Ruth. Some of the characters’ story lines work better than others. Ruth's is the strongest. Her life seems to parallel the author's most closely. That of the Japanese-American character is the weakest. As the title suggests, a lot of the book focuses on the eating habits of the young women. While I know that anorexia and bulimia are common among young women, it is hard to believe that none of the four has a "normal" "relationship" with food.Using the device of focusing on each character at three distinct time periods comes across as a way for the author to avoid having to deal with the need to develop the characters over time. I attended the same college as the author and the characters in the book, albeit at an earlier time. I too lived in a suite with three other young women my freshman year. So, I was definitely predisposed to like this book. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.