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Chana Porter

The Thick and the Lean Hardcover – April 18, 2023

by Chana Porter (Author)

4.4 29 ratings

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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In Lambda Award finalist Chana Porter’s highly anticipated new novel, an aspiring chef, a cyberthief, and a kitchen maid each break free of a society that wants to constrain them.

In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.

But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.

Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success...until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law.

With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.

A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.

Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gallery / Saga Press
Publication date

April 18, 2023
Dimensions

6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1668000199
ISBN-13

978-1668000199
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Chana Porter
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Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
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Gerardo Sámano Córdova
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Emily Tesh
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Nick Medina
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Thick and the Lean flips our known world inside out and, in doing so, exposes familiar seams of subjugation—from purity culture to capitalist exploitation. Chana Porter is a brilliant engineer of speculative societies and vivid far-flung realms, but she is also an author who reminds us what matters most in our real lives: the urgency of living our highest truth. This novel is a feast of ideas I didn’t want to end."—Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria

"Decadent and richly imagined, The Thick and the Lean topples expectations and skillfully re-maps vice and virtue, indulgence and shame as we know them. This book is wildly new and deliciously satisfying, and Porter is one of our moment's most original seers."—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Something New Under the Sun

About the Author

Chana Porter is a playwright, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls, trans, and nonbinary youth that uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world. She lives in Los Angeles, California, and is also the author of The Seep, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gallery / Saga Press (April 18, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1668000199
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1668000199
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #879,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,603 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 29 ratings

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Chana Porter

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Chana Porter is a theater artist, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls and trans and non-binary youth which uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world. She lives in Los Angeles, California. Pronouns: she/they

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4.4 out of 5

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Meghan McNamara

Speculative fiction at its most delicious

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2023

I can’t stop thinking about this book. In the way that the best speculative fiction takes something you live with every day and makes you see it in a whole new light, this book has forever changed the way I see wellness and diet culture. It asks critical questions about privilege and wealth, sexuality and choice, finding happiness within unjust systems, and fighting for change—all while describing the most delicious meals you can imagine. There is also an extremely fun novel within a novel filled with lust and court intrigue. Basically, it has everything you want!

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Katharine

A feast, sumptuously wrought

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2023

What does it mean to seek sustenance—physical, philosophical, or spiritual? All of the deeply compelling characters in The Thick and the Lean are on their own journey to find the answer to that question, and their paths take unexpected turns through the vividly imagined world Porter has created. No one captures sensation in prose quite like Porter does, and this book is literally mouth-watering—the recipes, and the way they’re threaded into the fabric of the cultures and histories she’s created, were some of my favorite parts. Don’t miss this one, and have plenty of delicious snacks close on hand for reading.

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Kelsi Hidde

Interesting eating disorder/religion discourse

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2023

If you related to books like Talia Hibbert's The Brown Sisters trilogy or One to Watch by Kate Stanton-London for their positive depiction of plus size women falling in love, you need to read this one. The Thick and the Lean is the radical fat acceptance book for all 90's babies.

I will admit that I found this book hard to get into. I was about a third of the way through before it captured my interest. But, with all pun intended, I DEVOURED it from there after. This book offered social commentary on disordered eating, religious extremism, capitalism, and racism in truly the most unique way. I have suffered with an eating disorder since I was literally a child, mainly because of the way society views body size and health.

I grew up very similarly to the main character Beatrice. Beauty was intrinsically linked to body size. Hunger was demonic. Enjoying food to simply enjoy it was a base, shameful feeling. However, The Thick and the Lean takes it to a whole new level adding in a level of religious fervor to the anorexia. Not only was needing food a moral failing, but in Beatrice's world, it also affected your godliness. The book does a fantastic job of highlighting how restriction-based diets affect the person psychologically. The second main character, Reiko, has a roommate who hoards food in her closet and suffers from bulimia, All of these are symptoms of restriction. As soon as the restrictions are lifted, the person turns to binging and has no ability to self-regulate. Wrap all of this up into the shame culture surrounding religion and that is a recipe for disaster (again pun intended).

Watching the two very divergent paths Beatrice and Reiko follow through life was incredibly interesting. Beatrice learns to follow her own path and to how to love herself in her own skin. She accepts herself and runs away from her cult-ish island to pursue her passion of becoming a chef. Reiko, who grew up in the slums of the country, seized her opportunity to a university scholarship for computer science. The two of them with such similar starts, couldn't experience life in more different ways. Beatrice accepts the flaws of society and that she will never fit in. Reiko only grows to resent the world and becomes a grifter to float her way up through the ranks. You will need to read this book for yourself to see who is happier and more self-fulfilled. Also there is a grand reveal in the epilogue that will make you RAVENOUS for the next book.

Anyone who grew up in the early 2000's with the great monster of diet culture seriously needs to read this book. I will leave it here with my favorite quote of the book: "This body was not decorative, it was not slight, it was not willowy, it was not thin. This body took up space, this body made things. This body was her home." "I owe you an apology," she said into the mirror, her eyes streaming with tears.

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Mx. Rae (Mariah) MacCarthy

dazzling

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2023

The world building is so elegant, the characters so richly drawn, the language so dazzling. It’s been years since I was so swept away by a book. A triumph.

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AV_Therearenobadbooks

Great Inversion

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2023

I was excited to read this book because I love and respect food as a form of art and was curious. It didn't disappoint.
It wrapped me in such a way that I couldn't put it down and read it in a day.

This novel will present a lot of triggers to people when it comes to exploring good and bad things that can relate to the theme of food and also sex. But I am so happy to see the author didn't fear or shy away from writing her story.

What a fantastic inversion. In this world sex and food switch places (for example, the characters are in a mall and people can go to a sex court as a common daily necessity, while going to a restaurant is a forbidden sinful activity). On top of this, religion mediates both areas to manipulate society.

Congratulations to the author. The concept is great and I can appreciate the hard work put into it to make this dystopian world work. It offers us something that sounds fresh instead of the usual dystopian tropes. The cover is amazing.

There are plenty of sex descriptions and scenes and a bit of romance but thank god it's not about the melodrama of relationships, but about the roles of these relationships in this society. Also, the roles we chose for ourselves, the courage vs what is imposed by us (our values) or by society.

A very clever almost alien world that is still very relatable showing oppression and freedom from it.

Two characters, two lives, fighting for a place to belong and to be loved.

Thank you Goodreads for the Giveaway and the opportunity to share my honest opinion.

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2023

This unusual dystopian tale twines the lives of Beatrice, who grows up in a cult that worships starvation, Reiko who drops out of school and becomes a grifter of sorts, and Ijo who wrote an autobiography centuries before. Chapters of Ijo's book are included but Ijo remained somewhat of a mystery to me (more Ijo would have been appreciated). Food looms large here- it's almost a fetish, especially in Beatrice's world where it's shameful, I would have liked more world building but the characters were well done. There are many themes here and readers will no doubt find some of them more subtle than others. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Interesting read.

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