The Appetites of Girls, by Pamela Moses
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The Appetites of Girls, by Pamela Moses
Read and Download Ebook The Appetites of Girls, by Pamela Moses
For the audience that made Commencement a New York Times bestseller comes a novel about women making their way in the world.Four young women are thrown together as roommates freshman year in college: Ruth, Francesca, Opal, and Setsu. Each is striving to overcome struggles from childhood and find her true self.Tormented by self-doubt, Ruth is coddled by her immigrant mother, who uses food to soothe and control her. Defiant Francesca believes her heavy frame shames her Park Avenue family; to provoke them, and to protect herself, she consumes everything in sight. Opal longs to be included in her glamorous, adventure-seeking mother’s dinner dates—until a disturbing encounter forever changes her desires. Finally, Setsu, a promising violinist, staves off conflict with her jealous older brother by allowing him to take away the choicest morsels from her plate—and from her future.As their stories and appetites collide, these women make a pact to maintain their friendships into adulthood—but each must first find strength and her way in the world.READERS GUIDE INSIDE
The Appetites of Girls, by Pamela Moses- Amazon Sales Rank: #1232304 in Books
- Brand: Moses, Pamela
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Released on: 2015-06-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.23" h x .87" w x 5.46" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
Review “This gorgeously written story maps the links between love and food.” —Redbook“A beautifully written...tale of women finding courage.” —Kirkus Reviews“Emotionally charged…clear-eyed prose.” —Publishers Weekly “A vivid, multilayered portrayal of friendship.” —Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence"Smart and tender and true."—Rebecca Rasmussen, author of The Bird Sisters “An important book for our times—and for our friends, daughters, and ourselves.” —Sarah Pekkanen, author of The Best of Us“A terrific novel.” —Martha Moody, bestselling author of Best Friends
About the Author Pamela Moses received a B.A. in comparative literature from Brown and an M.A. in English from Georgetown. She lives outside New York City with her husband and their two children. The Appetites of Girls is her first novel.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. This, above all else, binds the four of us together: standing side by
side, each struggled to believe the best in herself, hearing amid
the dark doubts in her mind the whisper of triumph.
Long before we grew in strength, we began life in separate corners.
In my first moments, I made only small whimpers, my family tells me.
Then my face turned red as beet soup, my fists tight as knots, and I cried
with a roar that seemed beyond my tiny lungs. Opal was born into the
arms of midwives in a country house outside of Paris. Her mother reclined
on feather pillows and sipped lemon water until it was time. Francesca
claims she bellowed her first day morning through night until the
nurses relented, freeing her from her swaddling blanket. And Setsu’s life
opened just as her mother’s closed, her cries lasting longest of all.
Far we have come since those beginnings, and long the journeys to
victory over doubt. But always, in us, were stirrings of possibilities, and
we would find the will to hold fast to these hopes.
In the eleven years since graduation, Francesca and I have phoned each
other regularly, as we have with Setsu and with Opal, a pledge we
made long ago and kept. But in the spinning hum of our grown-up lives,
our visits became sporadic, and not since our final college year have all
four of us been together in one place. This past spring, though, just days
after Francesca had come into Manhattan, meeting me for lunch and a
stroll through the American wing of the Met, she called, insisting the
baby I was carrying deserved a celebration. Besides, what better excuse
could the four of us have to reunite? For old time’s sake, she said. Wouldn’t
it be fun?
“Oh, no, Fran, you don’t need to. Thank you, really . . .” I had fumbled
for the appropriate words to decline her unexpected offer. In part
because it is not in the Jewish tradition, a baby shower had never crossed
my mind.
“B’sha’ah Tova—in good time,” my aunts and sisters and mother had
said when they learned that I was expecting. One’s hopes should not rise too
high before the hour comes. Congratulations may bring bad luck, they worried.
My grandmothers and great-?grandmothers
would not have so much as
knitted a bootee before a baby’s arrival. “Why tempt bad spirits?” Nana
Leah had cautioned with an old wives’ superstition.
But shouldn’t I have known Fran would persist? “Ruth, you are bringing
a daughter into the world. How can you refuse her some festivity?”
There was a time she could talk me into many things because I lacked
the courage to trust my own mind. Now, though, with the sudden possibility
of reuniting with my suitemates, I realized I missed not just each of
them separately, but all of us together as a group. Our weaknesses differed,
but our journeys to overcome them were shared. We learned from
one another’s struggles, and learned, too, we were not alone in struggling.
In our day-to-day living together and the friendships formed in
those years, we gained strength to fight for our deepest yearnings. And
now as I take this new step toward motherhood, it seems fitting that we
four come together again.
So here we sit at this table beneath the tulip tree: Francesca, Setsu,
Opal, and I. Our spoons dip into shallow dishes of chilled soup as the
tree’s high branches cast soft, swaying shadows across our faces and arms
and the plates of luncheon food before us. Years ago we could not have
dreamed we would ever be this picture of contentment. But no storms
rage forever, not even those that whirl within us. Yes, each of us was
stronger than she knew. Even I.
Fran has thought through every detail. Her garden table is set with
linen place mats and napkins, at its center a crystal vase thick with
daffodils. At the table ends stand two pitchers of iced mint tea, their
handles wound with ivy and tiny white flower buds as intricate as snowflakes.
And beside each plate, someone has placed a pair of cellophane-wrapped
baby shoes made entirely of pink sugar.
This is the first time any of us has seen Francesca’s new Connecticut
home, and when I arrived, ringing the bell to the right of her paneled
front door, I heard her calling to someone—“Got it! Got it!”—and then
the familiar pounding of her running feet.
“God, it’s great to have you here,” she said, kissing me, walking me
through the house, hanging my spring jacket in her hall closet. As we pass
the kitchen, I glimpse the food to be served—dishes I had seen in
magazines—crustless sandwiches rolled like pinwheels, bowls of pastel
soup with scrolling loops of cream at their edges, salads of nearly transparent
green leaves no larger than rose petals. A trim woman in a starched
white blouse stands to the left of the double sink, slicing raw vegetables—
Lucienne, Francesca introduces her.
“This is really so beautiful, Fran—everything. And so generous—”
“Oh, goodness. You’re welcome.” She shrugs off my words, never
comfortable with sentiment. “Let’s talk about you. You look wonderful.
How are you feeling? Are you getting any sleep?” It was the one trial of
her own pregnancies, she remembers. How for hours in her bed, with
eyes wide open, her mind would whir.
“Sleeping, yes, but I’ve never had such vivid dreams,” I tell her.
As we speak, a dream of the four of us from the night before returns
to me: we are racing along the shore, kicking up the foaming water. And
how young we are. Only girls, but then in a twinkling we are women,
with our shadows stretching far, out into the ocean.
Then we are interrupted by the arrival of Opal, followed soon by
Setsu. “I can’t believe you’re here,” Fran says. “You both look terrific.
And doesn’t Ruth look terrific?”
But Setsu and Opal are already embracing me, asking me exactly
how many more weeks, exclaiming that I’m radiant.
In the kitchen, Fran mixes mimosas, pouring them into tall flutes.
“Occasional drinks in the third trimester are permissible, aren’t they?”
She winks at me.
“Just not the way you make them.”
She laughs, surprised by my retort but approving of it, and fills a
separate flute without champagne.
Lucienne arranges the bowls of soup on a tray, and we follow her,
carrying our glasses across the lawn, settling around the table. And now
as our spoons clink against Francesca’s china bowls, we begin to chat, at
first taking turns, speaking of work, of families, of things we’ve heard of
other college friends. But before long, we are talking together and at
once, the way we used to do. A rhythm suddenly familiar as chords from
well-loved but, for a time, forgotten music.
Setsu surprises us. While sorting through some files at home, she has
unearthed some photos from our college days.
“Oh, look at us. Is that freshman year?” Opal asks.
“Yes, it must be finals week. We look exhausted. Remember how we
studied until morning and Fran kept us all awake with chocolate-?covered
coffee beans?” Setsu smiles at Fran.
“That’s right! And, Ruth, you collapsed on your books right on the
floor!” Fran recalls.
We laugh and agree it feels both a lifetime ago and just like
yesterday.
As we put aside the photographs, and as I look from Setsu to Opal to
Fran, I see their clothes are more tailored than they once were, their hair
more stylishly cut, the angles of their faces more defined. But in other
ways, how little they have changed. Setsu’s long fingers still fold beneath
her chin as she speaks, pressing to her mouth now and then when she has
finished. Francesca’s voice pierces with the same old boldness. And as the
soup begins to disappear, how well I recall Setsu’s tiny meals—
mouse portions, I thought them—that gave her rope-thin arms. Opal’s insistence
on measuring, analyzing every morsel before it passed her lips, scrutinizing
each bite before she swallowed. Francesca with her penchant for
frosted cakes, her French baguettes and Brie from the gourmet store in
town. Much of those years has faded and blurred, but these and other
things I still see clearly. And I cringe at what they surely, maybe especially,
remember of me.
As the soup slides along my tongue, I gaze at each of the women and
think of the hindering roots that had found soil in our earliest experiences
of life. Entangled with a thousand secrets and unshared stories, and
thickening as we grew, becoming, after a time, almost as hard to cut
away as our own limbs.
But these struggles are part of what it means to be human—struggles
with our own natures, often undeclared, as if unnoticed by those who
know us, even by ourselves. Yet such battles must be waged and won if
we are to grow, if we mean to claim what is truest within.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Great Read By Maxwell03 This is the best coming of age girlfriend book since Jennifer Close's Girls in White Dresses (which I loved!). Moses does an excellent job fully developing each individual woman's personality, story and "appetite" intertwining them all into an excellent examination of various types of female friendships.Highly recommended!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. College lives By B Farrell I read this book in one day. It is an exceptionally well written novel about the lives of four girls who become college roommates in their freshman year of college and decide to remain roommates all the way through. There is such beautiful, descriptive character development within this story that I found myself just glued to it and just couldn't tear myself away till I finished it. Each girl has issues to deal with that mostly started way back before the college years and has carried over into their adult lives. It has shaped them into the people they are and each one approaches the emotions they face in a different way. The story is told from alternating girls point of view. In this way we learn what happens in their life before they become roommates that sets the background of why they react the way they do in college around food, each other, and men. This is definitely a book I will highly recommend!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Interesting Structure By Yolanda S. Bean This book is broken up into sections - first by chronology and then by point-of-view. The first section, the coming of age of these four girls who will later become college roommates, highlights the differences between them. And though the title is catchy, a more apt title (for this section in particular) would be “The Mistakes (or outright cruelty) of Mothers.” Making these mothers - so far the only true women in the book - so unlikable and unsympathetic is a rather surprising decision for a book that has garnered advanced praise hailing this as such a strong piece of women’s fiction...I also wish that the 1980s timeframe had more emphasis in this early section. Still, it is an engaging read and anyone who has ever found flaws with their own appearance will find something among these insecurities to identify with. But I am truly taken aback that the main set-up for this novel is basically one bad mother after another.The second part - set during the college years - still carries over the bad parenting and compounds this with poor choices in men. Yet there is something engrossing about the story in its own way, though the characters become less readily connectable as they age. And the last section - the post-college years, feels more unbalanced than the previous sections - especially in the pacing and how the chronology plays out. Setsu, in particular, seems rather shafted in this section. The epilogue contains a rather rushed quality, but I can see how book discussion groups will find plenty of interesting fodder to fuel their talks. Though ultimately, this book leaves my reading appetite unsatisfied.
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