The Middlesteins (2012)

Edie Middlestein weighs more than 350 pounds and keeps gorging herself, helpless against the grotesque appetite that's threatening her life and ripping her family apart. Why can't this brainy, charismatic woman stop eating? The Middlesteins doesn't offer much of an answer. Attenberg's slender fourth novel is an intriguing dysfunctional-family story told from multiple, fast-shifting points of view, but it never sits still long enough to truly explore the complicated minds of its characters. It's a deeply sympathetic novel that could use a little more insight. B