Comments on: Books I Hate.

By: Mercy

Mercy — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:34:57 +0000

Even in the movie of “In Her Shoes”, the guy Rose winds up marrying is interested in her from the beginning of the movie. Her losing weight doesn’t seem to be a part of her attraction for him –and they bond over love of good food. (And I have to say, I didn’t notice weight loss in Rose in the movie –I noticed fitness level going up, but not weight loss. And I thought it made it clear that the stepmother’s focus on her weight was totally innappropriate.)

By: NotDieting.com

NotDieting.com — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:45:55 +0000

I agree with you completely. The weird thing is that Jennifer Weiner (not Jessica Weiner, who is featured on my blog) is overweight, so why does she want her heroines to lose before they win?

By: Bri

Bri — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:28:26 +0000

chick lit… ugh.

By: Shauna

Shauna — Thu, 22 May 2008 06:09:20 +0000

Am I the only one who read the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and saw not one but two of the main characters fall into depression, gain weight, and only become happy again once they’d lost it back? (Not implying causation here, but there was definitely correlation.) Which surprised me because I’d heard good things about the Carmen character and her weight.

By: Reas

Reas — Thu, 22 May 2008 02:25:25 +0000

JW’s latest is about Cannie from “Good in Bed” and her tenuous relationship with her daughter, alternating perspectives from Cannie to Joy. The fact that Cannie is a larger woman is almost a footnote.

She has two other books that came out between this latest and “In Her Shoes”. The first was “Little Earthquakes”, which was about young mothers and their relationships with their spouse, their kids and each other, and “Goodnight Nobody”, which was a suburban mystery, of all things.

All her books have at least one character that is fat and those characters don’t seem to be obsessed with losing weight. None of them have major transformations where they’re magically thin by story’s end.

I like her stuff. Characters are complex, I get the gen X references, and ultimately I think her message is that friends and family are what matter most. Plus her last two books have not had the classic Happy Ending, which is a nice turn.

By: i_geek

i_geek — Thu, 22 May 2008 01:30:47 +0000

Shinobi, have you read “In Her Shoes”? I didn’t think the movie did it justice at all. In the book, Rose doesn’t lose weight. She does start taking care of the body she has and becomes comfortable in her skin for the first time in her life, but she remains the same size throughout the book. The book also does a good job of shooting massive holes through the FoBT with Maggie’s life and back-story.

Yes, there are shoes, but they aren’t a major player and even Rose’s shoe collection is explained reasonably in the book. *shrugs* I enjoyed the book. Happy ending, sure, but real life is so depressing sometimes that I use fiction as escapism.

Haven’t read “Good in Bed” so I’ve got nothing there.

By: Chrissy

Chrissy — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:45:33 +0000

I haven’t read “Good in Bed,” although it was recommended (and therefore loaned) to me by one of my friends. There are soooo many books that don’t portray their fat characters as happy. In my experience, I’ve only ever read one book where the girl fails to lose weight (although, if I remember correctly, she hated her size) and still gets the guy and the happiness (I think the happiness came first). I can’t remember it’s title, but it was rather obscure. It was very food positive, too. I remember that the guy fell in love with her because he loved how she ate.

Anyway, I’m sick of fat-biased fiction. And maybe I’ll stay away from “Good in Bed.” Well written post. I enjoyed it.

By: Robotitron

Robotitron — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:50:29 +0000

Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie, has a fat heroine. A lot of the book is the fight against the fantasy of being thin.

By: Christie

Christie — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:02:02 +0000

Though Cannie, the main character in Good in Bed, does lose weight near the end of the book, it’s the result of depression. The weight loss showed that “the fantasy of being thin” is just that: a fantasy. Even though Cannie lost weight, she was miserable. Peter, her boyfriend, met her and liked her as a fat women. And, most importantly, CANNIE GAINS THE WEIGHT BACK before the end of the novel. And she likes herself better that way.

And Rose, the “fat” sister from In Her Shoes, doesn’t lose weight. She starts walking dogs and riding her bike. She doesn’t lose weight, but she does engage in healthy physical activity and becomes more confident. She doesn’t lose weight for the wedding, but she does wear a beautiful dress designed and made by her sister and grandmother. Weight loss isn’t that much of a theme overall. I’ve seen part of the movie, and what I’ve seen is different from the book.

By: Tari

Tari — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:12:53 +0000

I liked “Good in Bed” okay…sort of middling “chick lit” and definitely sooooooo much better than that horrid screed “Jemima J,” which I threw across the room upon finishing and possibly burned later. ((Also horrible: “Alternate Beauty” – which was sufficiently vomitous that I was forced to post a mean review on Amazon. And ditto on the hating of “She’s Come Undone,” which cured me of ever touching an Oprah book again.)) I read a couple other of Weiner’s books, but – despite having “fat” protagonists and mildly pro-fat plot points – the writing just wasn’t dazzling enough to keep me hooked.

Honestly, a lot of fat accepting lit tends, in my opinion, to suffer from mediocre writing; there’s not much out there I’m willing to actually recommend. Having said that, I liked “Inappropriate Men” by Stacey Ballis (read another of her books and was only mildly into it; see above, re: mediocre); I also mostly liked Lori Wilde’s “Mission Irresistible,” though not enough to read anything else she’d written; and of course there’s Sue Ann Jaffarian’s Odelia Gray books, which aren’t my fave mysteries (sadly, the not-so-fat-loving Amelia Peabody series takes that spot), but don’t suck.

And if y’all go and write some fat positive sci-fi, please let me know. I would be all over that.