13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

by

Paperback, 224 pages

Published Feb. 23, 2016 by Penguin Canada.

ISBN:
978-0-14-319479-8
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4 stars (1 review)

Follows Lizzie, a young woman growing up in Mississauga, as she fights her way from fat to thin, but who still, even as a married adult woman, sees herself as a fat girl.

7 editions

reviewed 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

Review of '13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book explores the struggles of an overweight woman to be accepted in society and to accept and love herself. Unfortunately, she never really achieves this, so it sends a pretty depressing message. It does demonstrate that, even if the weight is gone, the damage done by society's attitudes towards weight lingers. This is an important insight that overrides some of the book's flaws.

The book is well-written and a fairly fast read, but I didn't care for the "collection-of-short-stories-but-not-really" format, which I found disjointed. And while there was much to empathize with, it was sometimes challenging to empathize with Lizzie/Beth/Elizabeth, because she did not like herself much and didn't give the reader many reasons to like her, either.