Rating: 
Summary: read it, very good book, but not subtle, end sad (spoiler)
Review: the edible woman was given to me by a friend over two years ago and i never got around to reading it because i am not a big fan of books with messages and symbols - and usually prefer more straight stories. last week, i was looking for something to read and picked it up and could not put it down; it is very well-written. even before i started i was intrigued by the idea of controlling food in reaction to emotional stress and feeling out-of-control internally as it is too familiar a way of coping in myself and other women around me. i read the book mainly for the story. it was instantly captivated by the many well-developed characters. speaking of characters, pretty much everyone in this book, especially these grad student characters, are at times very funny! PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK:
there were no problems at all until the very very end, . this is where i am slightly confused. i did not read the book with any kind of symbolism in mind - i am one of the lucky souls who are able to turn off the internal literary analyst and simply not attend to them if i don't feel like it. at the same time, i was of course aware of the numerous symbolic elements in this book like one might be aware of passing by trees on a walking path. when the end came, i thought "is the book really is as simple as this: she leaves peter, gives the cake to this duncan dude? and her only problem was peter all along? where is the enlightenment? where is the maturity? where is the feminist bladiblah where you make a cake and finally break free of all the molds, make your own mold, say "hah!" not just to peter, but to the world and eat the whole damn cake yourself." see, what marian does is, forget what a great thing she did with the whole cake thing (as if it's one of her other dissociated episodes througout the book), says "it's just a cake" to a comment by ainsley and a few days later, oh, happens to remember there is some left over and finds it on some shelf and feeds it to duncan... seems to make a nice ending i know. but it is a sad ending. what did marian really learn? she appears still just as detached from herself. is she even a little wiser? i can't tell. what will she do next time a man comes to "destroy" her? maybe she will not eat again. maybe she will compulsively clean. if this was atwood's intended ending, then it is a very sad ending. very subtle and given what we know of marian not unlikely either, she is not the type to have sudden enlightenment. that would be cheesy... maybe this is intended. in that case it is quite a brilliant observation about women who can't quite break free. but a deeply sad one.but if atwood wrote the more simple book where we were actually supposed to sympathize with marian and see this as a book where she refuses conservative peter and lets the emaciated oddity duncan consume her, i would be quite disappointed. if this is the book we're talking about, it's a book of breaking free. and then if marian is breaking free, really why let _any_ man eat her cake?
4 stars and not 5 because the symbolism was overpowering and not very subtle. everything in the book seemed to revolve around the one issue of men/women, sometimes at the expense of making narrative unnaturally focused on certain things. you may or may not like that. a couple of times i felt like i was in a gender studies class.
Rating: 
Summary: symbolically in your face
Review: This book was a bit challenging to rate because I had read all of Margaret Atwood's other novels before I read this one; her first. Ms. Atwood is a brilliant author and conveyor of the feminine mind and perspective. Some of her novels are outstanding while most are at least very good. "The Edible Woman" is an excellent beginning for the author but it has its' flaws. The main flaw is the symbolism. The symbolism is too forced and it doesn't work well. I found myself wondering if I wanted to spend the time trying to figure out the symbolism. I decided that I didn't. The symbolism centers around the inability of the main character to eat a growing number of foods. I guess this was to coincide with the events in her life in which she was being "consumed" by those around her. The author's talent gave us a good enough story without the food distractions. It is a story of a young professional woman who seems to know what she wants but lets others call the shots. She enters into relationships with two different men neither of whom is in anyway suited for her. We are glad that the relationship with her fiance fizzles but we are left wondering why she ever got involved with the graduate student. We rejoice at her ultimate independence but are made to sift through the final installment of symbolism in order to do so. Ms. Atwood has used symbolism since her opening act as a novelist. However, to her credit, she learned to be more subtle about it. This was a good beginning and it only gets better from here on.
Rating:
Summary: symbolically in your face
Review: This book was a bit challenging to rate because I had read all of Margaret Atwood's other novels before I read this one; her first. Ms. Atwood is a brilliant author and conveyor of the feminine mind and perspective. Some of her novels are outstanding while most are at least very good. "The Edible Woman" is an excellent beginning for the author but it has its' flaws. The main flaw is the symbolism. The symbolism is too forced and it doesn't work well. I found myself wondering if I wanted to spend the time trying to figure out the symbolism. I decided that I didn't. The symbolism centers around the inability of the main character to eat a growing number of foods. I guess this was to coincide with the events in her life in which she was being "consumed" by those around her. The author's talent gave us a good enough story without the food distractions. It is a story of a young professional woman who seems to know what she wants but lets others call the shots. She enters into relationships with two different men neither of whom is in anyway suited for her. We are glad that the relationship with her fiance fizzles but we are left wondering why she ever got involved with the graduate student. We rejoice at her ultimate independence but are made to sift through the final installment of symbolism in order to do so. Ms. Atwood has used symbolism since her opening act as a novelist. However, to her credit, she learned to be more subtle about it. This was a good beginning and it only gets better from here on.
Rating: 
Summary: Young Atwood - Feminism and consumerism
Review: This is early Atwood. Far from being as refined as her later work (this was written in her 20s) the novel is nonetheless successful. A critique of women's roles in society. Atwood conveys the experience of a society driven by consumerism (it is no coincidence that Marian works for a market research company). Food symbolizes much. The protagonist, Marian, feels herself not only unable to eat but actually being consumed. She begins to struggle as she is devoured by those around her - Peter wants to consume even her image (she mistakes his camera for a gun). In the end Marian offers herself up to be eaten in the form of a cake. The catalyst for her change in emotioanal state is clearly her engagement. As she eats less and less we see her fears surface and the reader follows her to the edge of "reality" and delusion. Is the unnaturally thin Duncan even 'real'? A terrific book. I recommend any fiction or poetry (try 'Eating Fire') by Atwood.
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