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| Fat Girl: A True Story | 
 enlarge | Author: Judith Moore
Publisher: Plume
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  112 reviews
Sales Rank: 65402
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0452285852
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780452285859
ASIN: 0452285852
Publication Date: February 28, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: GOOD with average wear to cover, pages and binding. We ship quickly and work hard to earn your confidence. Orders are generally shipped no later than next business day. We offer a no hassle guarantee on all our items.
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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
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 Moores deep longing for family and a sense of belonging and love, Fat Girl stuns and shocks, saddens and tickles.
Frank, often funnyintelligent and entertaining.
Vick Boughton, People (four out of four stars)
Moores unflinching memoir sets a new standard for literature about women and their bodies. Grade:A.
Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly (editors choice)
Searingly honest without affectation . . . Moore emerged fromher hellish upbringing as a kind of softer Diane Arbus, wielding pen instead of camera.
Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, The Seattle Times
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.
Peg Tyre, Newsweek
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
A slap-in-the-face of a bookcourageous, heartbreaking, fascinating, and darkly funny.
Augusten Burroughs
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| Customer Reviews: Read 107 more reviews...
 worst book ever... October 22, 2008
so...this book started out all-right, with some vivid imagery, but it sharply went downhill, with the author refusing to write about a personal topic which is why i chose it in the first place. instead, she writes in a very detached way the history of her family, which she didn't even experience herself, starting w/ her grandparents when they were kids. it has nothing to do w/ her experiences of being fat, except for the fact that her grandfather has a bad eating habit like she does now. it's extremely boring and dry, packed chalk-full of needless informational facts about their grandparents, like where and when they were born, etc... i stopped reading this book about 40 pages because it was so bad, and it was a huge waste of money. it read like a high-school history book
 Brilliant! October 7, 2008
I was blown away by Moore's honest,painful and moving account of her life as fat girl. Her honest and objective appraisals of herself, her parents and her extended family are fearless. She's also able to unexpectedly find humor in unlikely situations. This is one of the best books I've ever read. I couldn't put it down and re-read it immediately after I finished it for the first time. This is not one of those "feel good" recovery novel. Moore points out at the beginning of the book that it's not about eating disorders and that the Rockettes aren't going to show up and dance across the stage in the final, triumphant act. Thank God! It's just an ordinary life made remarkable through brilliant writing.
Disgusting, self-indulgent and sad July 31, 2008
I have never been slim and so picked up this book with interest, but the endless descriptions of fat were disgusting and the stories about Judith's childhood were horribly sad. I cannot imagine what possessed her to write this book except perhaps a serious mental health crisis (to which she is certainly entitled based on the contents of this book).
Boring with an Abrupt Ending July 30, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I listened to the audiobook and had to force myself to finish all five CD's because I wanted to see how it ended. Four and a half CD's full of lists of all the food she ate growing up and an abrupt, unsatisfying end. It's like she wrote down everything she possibly remembered from her childhood, whether it was relevent or not, and then had to finish the book to meet a deadline. Did she learn any lessons from her bad childhood? Does she try to treat her daughters better than she was treated? Has her self esteem improved any as an adult? What was the point of writing this book? To tell us that fat children are doomed to be sweaty, stinky, and unlovable the rest of their lives?
Worst book I've ever read or well tried to read May 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It was sooo boring for me. I only got 50 pages in and decided I wasn't gonna waste anymore of my time. She just names off foods and rambles. There's no plot line or anything and it's impossible to stay focused in my opinion. Not worth the money.
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