New Zealand literary icon Catherine Chidgey’s newest release, The Starving Bride, has been consumed in its entirety in one sitting, which is unintentionally aligned with the content of the novel. It is a novel ripe with imagery, intense feeling, and lashing judgement, and i know it is one that all women, even young girls, will understand.

Content warning: The Starving Bride contains themes and dialogue surrounding food consumption, self-image, bullying, eating disorders and mental health illnesses, suicide ideation, and the “thinness epidemic”, something many of us will recall from one decade or another. This is a heavy topic that will push the boundary of comfort. If you feel this may trigger you, please do not read this review or this novel. Similarly, if you or someone you know is seeking help for an eating disorder, please contact your national helpline service. Seeking help is a big step, and it is a scary one, but it is so important.

Look at her. How serene she is in her long white dress, eyes closed like a stone copy of herself. Perhaps she lives on air. We would like a little piece of her – a hank of hair, a pared fingernail slender as a new moon, a wisp of skin peeled from a sunburned shoulder… England, the near future. Dumped by her boyfriend, fired from her job and estranged from her parents, Hazel Whitlock signs up for a sideshow act in Blackpool. The seaside resort has revived all the cancelled old favourites and she will be the Starving Bride. On display in the iconic Blackpool Tower, with a ravenous lion prowling the enclosure, Hazel must lie in silence while strangers view her body. As the days tick down, thousands are captivated by Hazel’s transformation. Some are inspired. Some are obsessed. And some are watching far more closely than they should be. Hazel’s old friend Gilda becomes increasingly worried for her welfare. Councillor Frank Marsh warns that the Tower could collapse – but no one will listen. As the spectacle spirals and the world outside grows increasingly unstable, Hazel must confront the truth: how far is she willing to go to be seen?

Catherine Chidgey’s writing style is very descriptive, painting a picture of eerie serenity from her fictional Blackpool, a place away from the realities of life, yet so close to the perils of this future-set world. I love her attention to detail and how the narrative voice flows, creating rhythm and sentients in something intangible. This narrative style and sharp setting description bring the story world alive, drawing the reader in like as an observer, much like the audience that comes to the circus to view these strange attractions. There is also a great power in her ability to run audience dialogue together, creating this recurring collective voice that is stark, dismissive, critical, distracted, unsure, jealous, disgusted, in awe, and completely enthralled. Without giving too much away, it gives credit to, feeds, and intertwines with Hazel’s inner monologue and running thoughts on the matter of her circumstances and task, drawing both protagonist and reader deeper into this vortex of speculation and toxic reflection.

The characters are so layered and mysterious, true to their roles as circus performers putting on acts and faces for the crowd. What feels so real though are the teen characters, from Hazel’s younger years to the young girls mentioned throughout the novel. It is terrifying how accurate the behaviours and voices of these younger characters are, how they are influenced to act by each other and what they perceive to be a higher power, and how impressionable these influencers are for these young girls. It really begs the question the role and responsibilities of “influencers” on social media and in the media that we see on a daily basis. The ones who, as adults, we can see are trying to sell something or faking something or filming in a way that distorts the real image. But to children they are seen as idols, inspirations, or, as included in The Starving Bride, thinspiration. Reading that word caused my whole body to contort and twitch. Then there was the Kate Moss quote, Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, that caused me flashbacks to those 90s and early 2000s models who were like bags of bones. As I mentioned, reading The Starving Bride is not for the ill-prepared, and there will be memories and images that come back to your consciousness as you read.

The Starving Bride is a fascinating and haunting read, and for some it might not be worth it in the end for all the traumatic memories that resurface. I felt it was written extremely well, made better by the character decisions and realisations that occur in the final few parts that shape the trajectory of the ending. I also cannot ignore the metaphor Xander, or Stanley, which I prefer, stands for. Once you understand that, once you see what is going on there, you will see this novel in a different light and it will astound you.

I highly recommend The Starving Bride for those of you who are prepared for such a read. I do not say that lightly, as I hope this review has implied, as the content of this novel is dark and heavy stuff. It is stuff that, unfortunately as girls and women, we become all too aware of from fair too young an age, and it is something that society has normalised that is so damaging and heartbreaking to see. I have read a review for The Starving Bride by a man and it completely missed this discussion surrounding body image, thinness, and the societal pressure for girls and women to be the smallest they can be. It goes to show this is not going to be a novel that everyone can understand and connect with in some way, but it is an important novel nevertheless. If you are a male reader, be is a brother, a father, an uncle, a friend, and so on, I highly encourage you to give The Starving Bride a read and consider the implications of the language and behaviours of the characters and audience.