Even though Ruth's only a hair thinner than I am, she's way on the other side of the fat girl spectrum, looking at me from the safe, slightly smug distance of her own control and conviction.13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is kind of a novel, with thirteen self-contained short stories that follow one young woman from school girl to adult, and throughout it all, Elizabeth (variously known as Lizzie, Liz, or Beth as her body changes and she seeks new identities) remains obsessed with her own weight and how that compares to the women around her. As she balloons and shrinks, attracting and distancing herself from friends, family, and lovers, Elizabeth is unhappy at every age and size, never measuring up, so focussed on herself that she makes no real connections with others. This book is by turns funny and discomfitting, it shines a light on the extremes of society's unrealistic expectations for women's beauty, but in the end, there was a kind of relentless sameness to the stories that wore on me; this wasn't a particularly enjoyable reading experience, and as the second half of the book sees Elizabeth thin and bitter and offputting, the character lost its heart and my sympathy.
I remind myself that Britta is another country, another sort of terrain, strange and distant from me. That she is bigger than I am. Older. Sadder. More beyond saving. That body-wise, spirit-wise, I'm just a room compared to her sad house.And yet, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl has some very interesting writing. I should break it down like this: sentence-by-sentence, I admired author Mona Awad's craft, and story-by-story, there were many scenes that I found shocking or funny or perceptive (maiden aunts and pearl-clutchers might be put off by some of the material), but in the end there was no synergy; these parts did not add up to something larger for me. This is a shorter than average review for me because there's simply nothing left to say.
I caught the owner of the Turkish restaurant next door staring at me from his upstairs window, smoking, just as I had finished my post-salad ritual of dragging my finger pads over and over again across the empty plate and sucking the oil off them one by one. It used to be he would say hello when I walked past him in the street. Now he looks at me like he's familiar with the details of my most unfortunate pair of underwear. Has fingered the fraying scalloped edge. Waggled the limp pink bow. Held the MADE IN CAMBODIA tag between his teeth.
The 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist:
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Andrew Battershill : Pillow
David Bergen : Stranger
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Kathy Page : The Two of Us
Susan Perly : Death Valley
Kerry Lee Powell : Willem De Kooning's Paintbrush
Steven Price : By Gaslight
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People
*Won by Madeleine Thien for Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Not really a surprise, but this is how I ranked the shortlist, entirely according to my own enjoyment level with the reading experience:
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People
