Book Review: Fat Girl

This past Thursday I was browsing the nonfiction/biography section at the library while the kids played on the computers and came across this book.  It wasn't too big of a book, and the title seemed like something that I could relate to.  So I checked it out.  When we got back home I started to read it while I was outside watching over Daven and the girls.

The first little bit starts out ok.  She talks about food in a way that made my mouth water.  Yes, I love food, too, Judith!  But then she backtracks her story to I believe before her parents were even born.  Honestly I'm not sure.  I had a hard time keeping up with whether she was talking about her grandmother or her mother's grandmother at the time.

And then it hit me.  This was the book that I changed my mind about wanting to read after my friend, Elizabeth reviewed it for her blog, Chubby Madness.  You can check out her review there.  But even after I realized that this was the book that I didn't want to read, it was too late.  I had to finish it.  Sure, I could have put it down then and turned it back in, but a part of me wondered if maybe I would like the book more than Elizabeth did.

I did not.

I might even dislike it more.  I'm not sure.

The further I got into the book, the more I was kept waiting for some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.  I waited for a glimpse of hope; some happiness hidden within the pages.  It didn't happen.  Judith's mother was abusive; her father absent.  She was fat-shamed from an early age.  She felt that her weight was the reason that her mother didn't love her.

Everything that happened to her is absolutely unacceptable.  But the book gave no conclusion.  There weren't any wishful thoughts or cries of victory from overcoming one's childhood.  The book left me sad and dissatisfied.  Is that wrong of me to think that way about someone's true story?  Maybe.  But I wish I had never read it.