The Fat Friend
Language: English
Published by Baskerville Publishers, 2004
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: Books Galore & More..., Port Perry, ON, CanadaBooks Galore & More...
AbeBooks seller since June 5, 2003
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 19.23
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Clean unmarked copy.
Seller Inventory # 005088
- Title
- The Fat Friend
- Author
- Edelson, Julie
- Publisher
- Baskerville Publishers
- Publication year
- 2004
- Condition
- Very Good
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1880909693
- ISBN 13
- 9781880909690
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 womens 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? "Whos 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 Fishermans Wife" on the joys of the home and consumer culture. "Whos 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
Told with a compassionate irony that encompasses men as well as women, the novel is a shrewd indictment of society . . . -- James McConkey
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Books Galore & More...
Port Perry, ON, Canada
AbeBooks seller since June 5, 2003
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