Reviews

Museum of Ice Cream by Jenna Clake

foggy_rosamund's review

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4.0

This is an intense, inventive collection about troubled relationships with food. In a world where food is fetishized and viewed for its aesthetic appeal rather than its nutritional value, how can we have a comfortable relationship with it? Jenna Clake looks at the ways eating disorders damage our relationship with food, and are part of a wider cultural problem with dieting and with attributing moral goodness to particular kinds of food. Told in dramatic monologues from various different voices, Museum of Ice Cream feel claustrophobic as it looks at women's bodies and how they are shaped by pop culture. The voices in these poems trap us and surprise us, making us feel wrong-footed and uncomfortable. The collection is constantly surprising and engaging, and creates a very exact, very true feeling of what it's like to be a woman constantly scrutinized by social media and pop culture. It's witty, tightly-controlled and pushes the boundaries of what poetry can do. Jenna Clake is a writer to watch.

sleepssundays's review

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5.0

Personal bias: Jenna is a dear friend and gave me a copy. But, also, these visceral, sensuous poems about bodies and food and relationships and the horror and joy of all those things pinned me to my chair in such a way that I ended up racing the sunset to try to read them all without having to get up to turn a light on because I couldn't stand to put the book down for even a second.

venetiana's review

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emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0


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will_meringue's review

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reflective medium-paced

4.0


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