Keelan Cavanaugh is fat. That’s why the government put him in prison.
They placed him in a Calorie Reduction Centre (CRC), where trained staff work to help him and many others slim down. Well, that was the intention, anyway. The powers that be had decided chubby citizens must either go there or lose their health care coverage.
When he meets Jacinda Williams, an activist lawyer researching this new system, Keelan is more determined than ever to slim down. But Keelan discovers losing weight is more difficult than it seems, especially when he also has to fight against a ridiculous bureaucracy and policy wonks with hidden agendas. Can he succeed, and will the CRC-crossed lovers ever sit at love’s banquet together?
From award-winning author Mark A. Rayner, The Fatness is a contemporary satire of socialism, capitalism, and the so-called “obesity epidemic”. This is Catch-22 for a new generation, with a distinctly tender undertone, even as it mercilessly spoofs the establishment.
Winner of Two Literary Awards for Humor
IPBA Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Humor (silver), 2018
IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Humor
Praise for Mark A. Rayner
“Mark A. Rayner—an all-Canadian synthesis of Douglas Adams and Ben Elton—understands that the best satire is only five degrees to the left of reality. The Fatness may not be reality (yet), but it’s too close for comfort. Luckily, it’s also funny as heck.” ~Corey Redekop, author of Shelf Monkey and Husk
“I’ve only come across a few writers who are truly funny, and Mark A. Rayner is one of them.” ~Terry Fallis, author of Best Laid Plans
“Mark A. Rayner’s characters possess substance enough, and exist in a world sufficiently vivid, to be able to revolt and liberate themselves in an exhilarating counterrevolutionary struggle.” ~Tom Bradley, author of Useful Despair as Taught to the Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch
“Mark A. Rayner is just a terrific storyteller and one of the most imaginative and original writers you will ever have the pleasure of reading.” ~Ian Ferguson, Author of Village of the Small Houses
“Mark A. Rayner is an author with a fantastical sense of humor and a dangerous imagination.” ~The Next Best Book Club
Human-shaped, simian-obsessed, robot-fighting, pirate-hearted, storytelling junkie Mark A. Rayner is an award-winning writer of satirical and speculative fiction.
By day, Mark teaches his bemused students at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (at Western University), how to construct social media campaigns and viable information architectures that will not become self-aware and destroy all humans. By night he is a writer of short stories, novels, squibs and other drivel. (Some pure, and some quite tainted with meaning.)
Many cheeseburgers were harmed in the making of this novel.
