Items related to The Fat Friend
Synopsis
The Fat Friend is a moral comedy that looks at beauty, the universally uncontested value. How is it variously conceived? Is it relative? What interests does it serve? Can we transcend it? How?
These questions are asked through the conversations of two old friends just into "the pause" and therefore at a critical juncture in relation to their appearance. Both have careers. Shell Fabrikant is the editor of a women’s magazine called Boom! and married with grown children. During the course of the novel, the empty nest she has longed for refills at the same time as she loses her job and her sense of direction. Trudy Kurzweil runs the regional cancer outreach program. We watch as the fat that has always defined her melts away, deconstructed, we ultimately learn, by disease. For most of the novel, however, Tru puts up a good front. She lives alone, but since everyone confides in the fat girl, she is a storyteller.
Of course, they meet to eat. Eating is so problematical for both - the one defiantly obese, the other marginal - they wrangle over it continuously. This tension sparks both the humor and the stories, fractured fairy tales that update the old wives with hilarious, startling, and often moving conclusions. Chapter 1, "The Ugly Duckling", takes the beauty culture to task from two different angles: can the mistreated little swan grow up to be beautiful, and are diverse definitions of beauty liberating? "Who’s That Nibbling?" uses a contemporary Hansel and Gretel to look at hunger and an aesthetic that makes self-denial to the point of illness a virtue in women. "The Frog Prince" dips into the competitive contradictions of adolescent sex; "What Big Teeth" develops pornography as an excuse for violence; "Let Down Your Hair" shows how beauty isolates women. "Beauty and the Beast" explores why beastliness in a husband is acceptable. "If the Shoe Fits" shows how workplace criteria constantly shift to keep us on the wrong foot; "Straw Into Gold" touches on the seductions of a beautiful idea and also asks how women are to balance motherhood and worldly ambition. "Go Fish" samples "The Fisherman’s Wife" on the joys of the home and consumer culture. "Who’s the Fairest?" wonders how a society based on obsolescence views aging, and "Sleeping Beauty" compares religion, the fitness cult, and contemporary feminist dogma. Chapter 12, "One of a Thousand Nights", concludes the work with practical tips on redemption and eternal life.
The Fat Friend is fresh, funny, and tender, without a sniff of sentimentality or self-pity. Its portraits of a wide array of contemporary characters from 18 to 80 are sharply drawn. Nothing written in the US today has the same combination of anger, speed, and brightness, although readers may be reminded of British writers Fay Weldon, Muriel Spark, Beryl Bainbridge, and Iris Murdock.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
This is an ingeniously plotted, warm-hearted, witty and wacky novel. -- Matthew Kangas
Told with a compassionate irony that encompasses men as well as women, the novel is a shrewd indictment of society . . . -- James McConkey
About the Author
Julie Edelson was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her three previous novels include No News Is Good (North Point 1986), Bad Housekeeping (Baskerville 1996), and Courting Disaster (Zoland 1999). Bad Housekeeping was translated and published in Germany as Kinder, Kunst, und Katastrophe by Lappan Verlag (1999). A short story, Cher’s Thoughts on Bosnia, was published by the Raleigh News and Observer in May 1999 and read on public radio.
She received her BA degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1970, after a senior year at the University of Manchester, UK, and her PhD from Cornell University in Comparative Literature. She has been married for 30 years and has two (spectacular) adult offspring.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Search results for The Fat Friend
Stock Image
The Fat Friend
Seller: Books Galore & More..., Port Perry, ON, Canada
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Clean unmarked copy. Seller Inventory # 005088