This is a memoir that chronicles a woman's love-hate affair with food, because it is for most of us. It's also a memoir about other people and their perception about being fat and the way they act towards fat people. I really, really liked that about this book. Most of the time, people like taking the self-righteous route when it comes to being fat. I don't think they realize that there are much more bigger, heavier stones to cast than being fat. I do not think family members realize that the more you stick your nose into a fat person's weight business, the more you remove yourself from being "family" to just a "relative". And Ms. Moore wrote about that. What a brave woman.
She also wrote about our ridiculous love affair with food. And most of the time, it is a love-hate affair. I understood what she meant.
Food is the enemy. Food is also the mother, the father, the warm-hearted Ryan Goslingesque lover, the house built of red brick that not even the wolf can blow down. Some people day dream of vacations and sex scenes. I daydream raspberry macarons. Food I ate, I think about the way people think about old lovers. Which only means one thing: I am fucked. People like me are fucked and well, we all know it. And no, not in a radiant redness all over worthy enough to have a MAC blush named after it, toes curled, screaming in a mixture of pleasure and pain kind of way. The kind that will never leave me. The kind that can and will kill.
The book may have had a few dragging parts in the middle but it took off on such solid ground that I couldn't help but finish it in one sitting. (Actually, I could but I refuse to pay for something that will and will always be taken against me. Plus, I really wanted to use the money for food, so...) It is often witty, sometimes irreverent, but all in all, a book that will hold your attention for its honesty.
Sure, it takes a few gripes here and there about superficial people, size, food, struggle and all these things involved in every fat memoir in the world but it presents something real. It does not turn into a jaded misrepresentation of living life in the fat lane or into a piece that coddles obesity (because it IS unhealthy). It's just a real, honest memoir of a life lived a certain way and I liked that. First person memoirs usually make the mistake of spinning a life that's so above and beyond the ordinary. Sometimes, the truth is enough. Feelings, without any appeal to empathy, are sometimes more than enough.
Recommended for: Oh, come on. I'm pretty sure you won't read this. But if you have a love affair with food like I do, you might want to read this to encourage you to eat less for a couple of days. Hehe.
PS. I have to admit this review sounds so bitter, angsty, and it has all kinds of implicit self-loathing that isn't actually cute. (Was it ever?) I'm sorry that it does but I don't feel like editing myself today. Also, I haven't had a grain of rice today and without carbs I am an extremely unpleasant person (like, much more than usual). #runningonlyoncoffee
