Fat Girl
A True Story
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4.0 • 27 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2005 (Entertainment Weekly)
For any woman who has ever had a love/hate relationship with food and with how she looks; for anyone who has knowingly or unconsciously used food to try to fill the hole in his heart or soothe the craggy edges of his psyche, Fat Girl is a brilliantly rendered, angst-filled coming-of-age story of gain and loss. From the lush descriptions of food that call to mind the writings of M.F.K. Fisher at her finest, to the heartbreaking accounts of Moore’s deep longing for family and a sense of belonging and love, Fat Girl stuns and shocks, saddens and tickles.
“Searingly honest without affectation… Moore emerged from her hellish upbringing as a kind of softer Diane Arbus, wielding pen instead of camera.”—The Seattle Times
“Frank, often funny—intelligent and entertaining.”—People (starred review)
“God, I love this book. It is wise, funny, painful, revealing, and profoundly honest.”—Anne Lamott
“Judith Moore grabs the reader by the collar, and shakes up our notion of life in the fat lane.”—David Sedaris
“Stark… lyrical, and often funny, Judith Moore ambushes you on the very first page, and in short order has lifted you up and broken your heart.”—Newsweek
“A slap-in-the-face of a book—courageous, heartbreaking, fascinating, and darkly funny.”—Augusten Burroughs
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her memoir of growing up fat, Moore, who previously wrote about food in Never Eat Your Heart Out, employs her edgy, refreshingly candid voice to tell the story of a little girl who weighed 112 pounds in second grade; whose father abandoned her to a raging, wicked mother straight out of the Brothers Grimm; whose lifelong dieting endeavors failed as miserably as her childhood attempts to find love at home. As relentless as this catalogue of beatings, humiliation and self-loathing can be, it's tolerable even inspiring in places because Moore pulls it off without a glimmer of self-pity. The book does have some high points, especially while Moore is stashed at the home of a kind uncle who harbors his own secrets, but the happiest moments are tinged with dread. Who can help wondering what will become of this tortured and miserable child? Alas, Moore cuts her story short after briefly touching on an unsatisfying reunion with her father and her two failed marriages. The ending feels hurried, but perhaps the publication of this book will give Moore's story the happy ending she deserves.
