Summary

How to Be Eaten is narrated partially by a present-tense omniscient narrator and partially by the main characters, who each tell their own stories in first-person past sections that are separated from the main omniscient narrator. However, it is revealed in the end that Bernice is the writer of the novel, and she is the omniscient narrator who has compiled all of the women's stories together to protect them from being manipulated. “Week One” contains two chapters. In “The Beginning,” four women arrive at the basement rec room of a YMCA in New York. Five women—Bernice, Gretel, Ashlee, Ruby, and Raina—had been blind cc’d on an email inviting them to a screening for a free, experimental group therap. The email asked if they were public figures with personal traumas and unique stories. All five women ignored the email at first...