If you’ve ever been even a little, teensy bit overweight, you’ll appreciate the story of Rosemary Goode, a 15-year-old girl who is five feet, four inches tall, and weighs 203 pounds at her peak.
Suzanne Supplee’s new book about a young woman struggling with (a) weight loss, and (b) learning to love herself in spite of her size, is delicious. It’s a feast for the soul. I read the whole thing in one gluttonous sitting.
Okay, enough already with the bad metaphors. The book is freakin’ good. It’s moving, and sad, and it touches the part inside all of us that doubts whether we’re enough, or too much, whether we can be loved, whether we deserve to be loved. It touches the angry part inside of us that wants to be loved in spite of our faults. It touches the guilty place where we feel selfish and thoughtless. And as if all that drama isn’t enough, there’s a nice bit of romance to make us ladies (and gentlemen) swoon.
I have to admit that when I picked this up at Barnes and Noble, I didn’t have the foggiest idea what it was about. I didn’t need to. With a cover like that, you know it’s going to be yummy. But I’m so glad that Suzanne went there, and talked about what it’s like to be the “big girl” in high school. She writes about compulsive overeating and the whys and wherefores of that particular behavior; she writes about the extra scrutiny we all give to what overweight girls eat; she writes about unhealthy crash diets and … well, you get the idea.
Look, even if you’ve never weighed more than 110 pounds, and you’ve always been a natural size zero, this novel will make you more aware of how the other side lives. And it’ll make you think before you make that fat joke.
It sounds like an after-school special, the way I describe it, but really Suzanne’s book is just heartfelt and real. Please will you go read it? Consider it a personal favor to me. And when you’re done, come back and tell me what you think, okay?
Buy Artichoke’s Heart
I couldn’t figure out what this was about for the longest time. I guess I didn’t put much effort into it either. But it does sound pretty good! I just finished Audrey, Wait! which was hilariously fantastic!