13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Mona Awad, 2016
Penguin Books
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143128489
Summary
Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks—even though her best friend Mel says she’s the pretty one.
She starts dating guys online, but she’s afraid to send pictures, even when her skinny friend China does her makeup: she knows no one would want her if they could really see her.
So she starts to lose
With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted dresses. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror.
But no matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?
In her brilliant, hilarious, and at times shocking debut, Mona Awad simultaneously skewers the body image-obsessed culture that tells women they have no value outside their physical appearance, and delivers a tender and moving depiction of a lovably difficult young woman whose life is hijacked by her struggle to conform.
As caustically funny as it is heartbreaking, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl introduces a vital new voice in fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Mona Awad received her MFA in fiction from Brown University. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Walrus, Joyland, Post Road, St. Petersburg Review, and many other journals. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing and English literature at the University of Denver. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Simultaneously tart and tender, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is stunning.... The way food and body image define Elizabeth’s life is depressing and sad. But the book is neither. There is so much humor here—much of it dark, but spot on, like Dolores in Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone or Lena Dunham in Girls.... As you watch Lizzie navigate fraught relationships—with food, men, girlfriends, her parents and even with herself—you’ll want to grab a friend and say: "Whoa. This. Exactly."
Washington Post
Heartbreaking…[rife] with beauty and humor.... As addictive as potato chips and as painful as the prospect of eating nothing but 4-ounce portions of steamed fish for the rest of your life.
Chicago Tribune
Awad explores the sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking ways that a person’s struggle with body image can seep into every part of her existence.... 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is not really about how Lizzie March looks…[it's] about how she sees herself.
Wall Street Journal
Awad is an incredibly skilled writer, with a rare ability to construct tiny moments of both acute empathy and astonishing depth…and] a profoundly sensitive understanding of the subject matter.... It’s impossible not to be deeply affected by [her] prose.... A real narrative achievement.
Globe and Mail (Canada)
Absorbing…. Subtle but poignant.... This sort of intrafeminine aggression will be familiar to most women, whatever side of the body war they’ve been on. But it is is a side of experience that hasn’t been much explored by literary novelists.
Guardian (UK)
With dark humor and heartbreaking honesty, Awad cuts away at diet culture and the pressure on women to make thinness and beauty their priority.
San Francisco Chronicle
Awad’s satiric edge is on display in her debut novel.
Los Angeles Times
It's as if the writer has eavesdropped on your most pathetic, smallest thoughts.... Awad's writing is heartbreaking and witty, while her prose is insightful and sharp-elbowed in its caustic edge.... [Lizzie is] a vulnerable, funny and fierce narrator.
Salt Lake Tribune
[Lizzie's struggle] is a valuable addition to the canon of American womanhood.
Time
In this dark, honest debut, Awad sharply observes…the struggles of growing up, growing out, and trying to slim down, at any cost.
Marie Claire
The nuance Awad adds to conceptions of weight and body image is applied also to her realizations of female friendships. Lizzie’s relationships with other women are at once petty and kind, jealous and admiring.
Huffington Post
[A]ssured and terrific.... Awad artfully revisits themes related to body mass, femininity, cultural values, and resistance, finding virtually no reasons to be optimistic.... Lizzie’s witticisms, while abundant, are…a profoundly somber indictment of…gendered cultural norms.
Publishers Weekly
Touching.... Behind the title of Awad’s sharp first book, a unique novel in 13 vignettes, is brazen-voiced Lizzie, who longs for, tests, and prods the deep center of the cultural promise that thinness, no matter how one achieves it, is the prerequisite for happiness.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [P]ainfully raw—and bitingly funny.... [I]n Lizzie, Awad has created a character too vivid, too complicated, and too fundamentally human to be reduced to a single moral. Lizzie…gets under your skin, and she stays there. Beautifully constructed; a devastating novel but also a deeply empathetic one.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl...then take off on your own:
1. Did 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl make you laugh or cry...or both? What specific passages/chapters do you find humorous or painful? Which ones make you angry?
2. What is the picture Mona Awad paints of society's obsession with body shape? What is acceptably thin according to social current norms? Can one ever be "thin enough"? What does she have to say about other women's attitudes, clothing sizes (Addition Elle), even the regime of gym sign-up sheets?
3. How does Lizzie see herself? Do you relate to her struggle? In other words, are you overweight...maybe just a tad? How 'bout those five extra lbs? They could probably come off, right? Do you feel the societal pressure on women to look good?
4. Young Lizzie tells us, "Later on I'm going to be really f------ beautiful.... I'll be hungry and angry all my life but I'll also have a hell of a time." By the final story, Lizzie has transformed herself. In what way does her achievement feel less than wonderful?
5. In one story, Lizzie and Mel agree with one another that "the universe is against us, which makes sense." Why does it make sense?
In the very next breath, Lizzie says that she and Mel "get another McFlurry and talk about how fat we are for a while." Given the prior statement, does that make sense? Why would the two indulge in the very thing that puts them in in opposition to "the universe"? Do you understand why they turn to more food?
6. At some point, Lizzie reflects on her relationship with her overweight mother. How does she think her mother affected her sense of self?
7. Consider doing some research on the current science of obesity, particularly and the role that hormones play in signalling appetite and satiety (ghrelin and leptin, for instance). How do Awad's stories about Lizzie's struggle for thinness dovetail with the new (or not so new) understanding of obesity?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use these, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)