| View Larger Image | Fat Girl: A True Story | Paperbackby Judith Moore (Author)
| List Price: | $13.00 | | Price: | $9.36 | | You Save: | $3.64 (28%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Plume | | Page Count: | 208 Pages | | Publication Date: | February 28, 2006 | | Sales Rank: | 50,646th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780452285859
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
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. |
Amazon.com Review
Judith Moore's breathtakingly frank memoir, Fat Girl, is not for the faint of heart. It packs more emotional punch in its slight 196 pages than any doorstopper confessional. But the author warns us in her introduction of what's to come, and she consistently delivers. "Narrators of first-person claptrap like this often greet the reader at the door with moist hugs and complaisant kisses," Moore advises us bluntly. "I won't. I will not endear myself. I won't put on airs. I am not that pleasant. The older I get the less pleasant I am. I mistrust real-life stories that conclude on a triumphant note.... This is a story about an unhappy fat girl who became a fat woman who was happy and unhappy." With that, Moore unflinchingly leads us backward into a heartbreaking childhood marked by obesity, parental abuse, sexual assault, and the expected schoolyard bullying. What makes Fat Girl especially harrowing, though, is Moore's obvious self-loathing and her eagerness to share it with us. "I have been taking a hard look at myself in the dressing room's three-way mirror. Who am I kidding? My curly hair forms a corona around my round scarlet face, from the chin of which fat has begun to droop. My swollen feet in their black Mary Janes show from beneath the bottom hem of the ridiculous swaying skirt. The dressing room smells of my beefy stench. I should cry but I don't. I am used to this. I am inured." Moore's audaciousness in describing her apparently awful self ensures that her reader is never hardened to the horrors of food obsession and obesity. And while it is at times excruciatingly difficult bearing witness to Moore's merciless self-portraits, the reader cannot help but be floored by her candor. With Fat Girl, Moore has raised the stakes for autobiography while reminding us that our often thoughtless appraisals of others based on appearances can inflict genuine harm. It's a painful lesson well worth remembering. --Kim Hughes |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 120 reviews)
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I am glad I gave this book a chance by B. Flatt  4 Stars
September 24, 2009
I actually gave this book more than one chance, and I am glad I did. This book isn't reviewed very high so I didn't know, for sure, what I was getting myself into. The writer writes the way she would talk to you in person. She has a very comfortable way of writing, which helps the reader follow right along with her when she writes about her life.
I will explore other things the author has written, because I like her style so much.
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Unrelenting, but I guess that's the point by T. Jacobs (Atlanta)  3 Stars
September 18, 2009
Judith Moore is fat. She was a fat child, a fat teenager and is a fat adult. But more than that, she suffered a horrible childhood where she was starved for affection and understanding. I completely understand her point, but I found the book to be depressing and abrupt. To her credit, she did indicate that it wasn't one of those "touchy-feely" books with a happy ending, but I guess I was still looking for....something. But maybe that's the whole point.
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A remarkable work by An Amazonian (Massachusetts, USA)  5 Stars
June 28, 2009
This book is astonishing, most of all for what it _doesn't_ do.
In memoirs of trauma, there is a strong pull to come to at least a partial resolution at the end. Moore never does. She rips off the scabs and leaves the wounds open. She wrote this book in late middle age, and she faces her belief that her wounds will never heal with incredible courage. Though she is enraged at the world, she tells us the truth, instead of protecting herself by pretending she's reached wisdom. And that shows her desire for genuine connection with us, and her hope against hope that somewhere in the world there are good, kind people who can help her.
A very strong, distilled work and a real piece of literature. In particular, I will never forget Moore's descriptions of her intense imaginary relationships with each of the cast members in Sweatin to the Oldies, the Richard Simmons tape she estimates she has done thousands of times. A gift to all of us that should be remembered.
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A cautionary tale: Self loathing will never go away on its own by Imez 3 Stars
May 27, 2009
It's not that it was fun to read. If you hate yourself, you have to make your self-loathing funny to pull off an entertaining memoir. This was purely sad, not funny. But the pain, the MEANNESS, undramatic but unrelenting, she was surrounded by, still haunts me. So I know it was well-written. But not necessarily enjoyable.
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amazing by Heather 5 Stars
April 13, 2009
I loved how personal, exposed and raw this book was. Most books that are a memoir or about a life experience aren't as raw and feels as if they hide things... this one certainly did not. I read this in about a day at work and just couldn't put it down. I can't believe how her mother treated her and "loved her" and just made her feel worse and everything. Just everything about it was very relateable and I think that every woman that has weight issues(I think that's all of us) can relate to at least some of these feelings.
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