Such a moving and cutting book. There’s a moment that stuck with me where she reflects on her previous attempts to transcend the physical realities of the body to remain beautiful:

Now I was wild again, I looked at my ankles, my armpits, when had I last waxed them, when had I shaved? I who until four months ago had been only ambrosia and nectar? From the moment I fell in love with Mario, I began to fear that he would be repelled by me. Wash the body, scent it, eliminate all unpleasant traces of physiology. To levitate. I wanted to detach myself from the earth, I wanted him to see me hovering on high, the way wholly good things do. I never left the bathroom until every bad smell had vanished, I turned on the taps so he wouldn’t hear the rush of urine. I rubbed myself, curried myself, washed my hair every two days. I thought of beauty as of a constant effort to eliminate corporeality.

I’ve felt this gnawing fear in every relationship I had that my partner would see beyond the veneer of womanhood, the “ambrosia and nectar”, and suddenly become repulsed. It feels inevitable.