Customer Reviews

Eve's Apple

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I have re-read this book many times, as it fascinates me for both personal and aesthetic reasons. Having endured 14 years as a bulimic/anorexic (recently recovered), I have found most fictional depictions of eating disorders to be shallow efforts that feed into the fallacious cultural stereotypes (the afflicted women are trying to revert to childhood; they are getting revenge on an inadequate/inattentive parent; etc.). Rosen's novel doesn't necessarily depart from some of these stereotypes-- its eating disordered heroine, Ruth, is an upper middle class product of an overbearing, narcissistic mother-- but its sensitivity and thoroughness is remarkably admirable. Rosen has clearly done his homework regarding the etiology of the disease, and there are stretches of writing which become a bravura performance; Joseph's interaction with the charismatic Dr. Flek, for example, and the way this leads to the revelation of Joseph's own obssession, are accomplished with an almost 19th-century precision. My one disappointment was Ruth, whose childlike neediness (alternated with thinly veiled hostility) bothered me; I would have preferred a depiction of a woman emotionally emancipated from her family and attempting to be stronger for her own sake, yet still, tragically, failing. Nevertheless, I recommend this book for all readers-- and especially those with a vested interest in the psychopathology of eating disorders and those whom eating disorders affect, both directly or peripherally.

Although not bad, the book has a rather unfinished feel, in my opinion. I cannot get a clear sense of the characters, the author tried to create a complex personality in Ruth (as well as in the narrator), but the descripions end up scattered and lacking depth and bizarre. The narrator gives the impression of being really meek and insipid, he lacks any sort of career ambitions and spends time hanging around at home and being fascinated with the minutiae of his girlfriend's eating disorder. I do not think the author dealt enough, or particularly well, with the question of the boyfriend's fascination for Ruth's struggle with food. And Ruth ends up being portrayed as absolutely insufferable, it would be hard to find a more unsympathetic character. Also, what's up with the crippled psychologist guy, Rosen could have done so much more with that. The book is intriguing at times, but you have to pay for that with many slooooow pages as well as the ambiguous, unfinished characters.

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.

The narrator, Joseph, is in love with Ruth, an anorexic young woman. Both are just out of college. A lot of details bothered me about this book. First, I never believed that this couple was in love. Second, Ruth's story was more like a case study than a piece of fiction. Ruth herself was flat on the page. I never got to know her, understand her motivations, or like her. The link between Joseph's need to care for her and the suicide of his older sister was forced. I just felt that this novel was "built" on a topic, rather than growing naturally out of deeply realized characters. Way too much time was spent recounting studies about eating disorders. If I were interested in that subject as a subject, I'd read the studies myself. The events and characters never resonated with me, although I was once a young woman in love and living with my boyfriend in New York City, as were Joseph and Ruth. The writing was very good and I did particularly enjoy Ruth's parents, step-mother, and Ruth's mother's lover, Ernest Flek.

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.

As a reader who has had a first hand experience with an eating disorder this book touched me. Maybe it was because I found myself having so much in common with the character, maybe not, I don't know. But it seem with most books that have and eating disorder as a story the characters are hard to believe even for me, though I know how they are portraid is true. But, with this book i loved it from beginning to end, glad that the character was so much like me. I would recommend it for any one interested it a good story with an eating disorder topic.

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

I have read plenty of fiction eating disorder books, and this is by far the best one. This is written from the POV of the boyfriend, and his girlfriend is the one with the eating disorder. It's very intellectual, compared to the other eating disorder cliche books. The boyfriend becomes very into trying to "cure" her eating disorder via reading up on mostly non-fiction books about ED's and their history. I fell in love with his caring manner, and how badly he wished to heal his girlfriend. It was a breathe of fresh air, and I highly recommend this book.

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.

Ruth and Joseph live tgether. Ruth suffered an eating disorder in high school, and has saved documented conversations, tape recorded arguements, and diaries from this time. Joseph is a teacher, teaching Russian people the English language. Joseph knew about Ruth's disorder back when he feel in love with Ruth. He chooses to break into her diary, several times, and read and reread her diaries. He dwells on the eating disorder. All he can think about is sexual intercourse, and how her body radiates in sexual energy and sexual senses and sexual longing for him. He has needs, after all. He throws himself upon her one moment, after a bulimic episode, and that blew it for me, folks. It should have blown it for him, too, but he keeps on. I didn't even want to finish the book cause of it's sexual perversions. I don't know if this book is truely about anorexia, or if it's about something worse. Joseph would not give up on this poor woman, but I gave up on Joseph.