Customer Reviews

Angry Fat Girls: 5 Women, 500 Pounds and a Year of Losing It...Again

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I recently decided to re-read Frances Kuffel's first book "Passing for Thin" when I discovered her new book, Angry Fat Girls. I ordered two copies right away and was anxious for their arrival. One copy is for me and another for a friend who shares the same "reality." Losing only to regain what seems like the same 100 pounds over and over again. In this book, Frances' journey is interwoven with those of Lindsay, Katie, Mimi and Wendy. Friends she met here on Amazon. Each woman's story is different and yet the same. I can relate to so much having been on my own weightloss rollercoaster my entire life. I laugh with Frances and at times I cry. My heart aches for these women and their pain. I cheer their victories.

Frances has a edgy humor that suits me. Her thoughts on giving your weight to God or a Higher power made me laugh out loud. Her words, "I can't bear people talking about HP. I inevitably wonder how Hewlett-Packard has provided a miracle." Seriously Frances, I think the computer world miracles are handled by Apple.

As a woman who has spent much of my life "mordidly obese" there are frank topics that I have never seen or heard mentioned before. I am not just like anyone of these five women, but I am the same...just the same.

Mimi's simple realization, "It's my decision whether to be happy or unhappy" struck me as I had that moment about 20 years ago. I chose to be happy whatever I weighed although I want to be healthy so I continue the effort to lose half of myself once again.

Frances deals in facts. "Just the facts Ma'am!" The way she relates those facts really does suit me. Call it inspiration. Maybe I feel a common soul with her and her friends. I know I share a common story. I hope that they are all able to leave the anger behind and find happiness in their lives regardless of their current weight.

This is a thoughful, thought filled book

I am currently reading this book, and I find it very difficult to get through. I really wanted to like this book because I can identify so much with all of these women. However, I feel like she does a terrible job writing this book. Someone else mentions that she goes off on these little tangents that go on and on. I completely agree. As someone with a difficult time concentrating, I could not focus on her points. She has way too much babble going on. So to make this review shorter, I would not recommend this book to anyone who likes clear cut and straight to the point reading.

This is a terrible read. imo

I hated this book. I really wanted to like it, I really did. It had the ups and downs of women trying to lose weight and basically failing over and over again... it was about the author but interspersed with the stories of the author's online friends.. maybe my idea of friendship is different, but it seemed almost mean, like she didn't even actually like these women. Some of her comments about them were incredibly snarky. She made some good points but I chug through most Kindle reads in a day or two. This one took me a few weeks. I really didn't want to finish it. If you're looking for some kind of feel-good story, look elsewhere. If you want to hang out with someone while you mutually blame your weight loss on everything under the moon besides yourself? Then read this book.

I tried to like this book. I did. It usually only takes me 2-4 days to read a book. I haven't even made it halfway through and I've had it two weeks. The structure and layout is beyond frustrating.

This woman tries to be too many different things at once. She cannot seem to decide if she wants to be a memoir, a book about herself and four other woman, a book about obesity, or reviewing/bashing "Fat Chick Lit" (I'm quoting). She talks about herself in one paragraph, and then goes off on a review about a book, then picks up where a story about her friend left off three pages ago.
She expects you to keep track of five woman's horrible issues, childhood, relationships (past and present), relationships with food (past and present), and their weight losses/gains, without any clear path. I found myself flipping back to previous pages just to remind myself who the hell someone was.
It says it's a story about a year of woman gaining and loosing weight, but I cannot find a clear time line. She'll talk about this girl first, then in the next go on about the other girl's family issues, while sprinkling in her own, before going back to the original.

This book would have been bearable if she had organized it properly. Each woman gets their own chapter, or just something better than this.

She doesn't even seem to treat her friends or herself very well. She talks about them as if they're in high school gossiping in the locker room.

There seem to be MUCH better memoirs out there about extreme weight loss that are actually ABOUT weight loss, and not droning about eight different topics. If you want a real story that is followable, skip this one. If I had actually bought this book, I'd be really upset.

I enjoyed Kuffel's first book and quite frankly would not have cared if she regained all of her weight had her writing maintained the spirit found in her earlier work. Here, however, there are fundamental errors of exposition: what is the topic, Kuffel's weight issues or the blog or a meeting of persons who are on the blog? And I must agree that Kuffel that she keeps the writing at the level of fact and thus (as if the distancing of obesity were not sufficient) keeps the reader at bay. There is no why or wherefore to these stories --- although there are intermittent tales of trauma -- but only an obdurant contempt for the self and the world in which the self is (apparently) imprisoned. In the end, I found the hopelessness and despair that is reflected here frightening. Yes, ultimately, I found these women and their seemingly unshakable self-destruction, and all the rage directed at others because of it, frightening in a very primitive way.

I agree with another reviewer that the editing was fairly atrocious which made it irritating to read. It was also irritating to have a lengthy diatribe about "Chubby Chick Lit" as the author terms it. There was really no reason for it. If I wanted a review of fat characters in novels aimed at women, I would have read one. I suppose I was looking for serious self discovery and redemption or, at the very least, inspiration and positivity. The author struggles with hope but gives in to despair. The despair makes her negative and snarky and very very depressing to read.

I want to do this book justice. In _Passing for Thin_ Frances Kuffel wrote about what it is like to lose a tremendous amount of weight after being obese. She wrote about not knowing who she was or how to be in her "normal" sized body. At the time I read her book I was experiencing the same thing. Everyone told me I should just be happy and enjoy the experience but the truth is our identities are tied up in our bodies. _Passing for Thin_ helped me to understand that there is more to losing weight than simply reaching a goal.

In _Angry Fat Girlz_, Ms. Kuffel takes it a step further. She writes about what it's like to be fat... to have lost the weight and found it again... and she writes about the experience in a clever, funny, and honest way. I laughed, I cried, I ate ice cream. I also had some "Ah ha" moments. There was the moment when I read about the way one of the women used to always ask her boss for time off from work instead of telling her boss that she would be gone. I was that person. The next day I went to work and told my boss when I would be on vacation. What a freeing experience.

The other thing Frances talks about is the facts. She brings in scientific research that sheds light on the way our bodies work.

What's so great about _Angry Fat Girlz_ is the recognition that while being fat may be a common experience it's also a personal experience. There's also the recognition that while we inhabit our bodies, our bodies are not all we are. We are amazing, loving, strong, intelligent, successful women in spite of or perhaps because of our bodies. More than anything Frances helped me to hold a mirror up to myself and look at what is going on my life and also look at how I am relating to other people.

It's a great book. If you want to know that you're not alone or you want to understand more about more than 50% of the American population check out this book. And of course if you want a funny smart memoir, _Angry Fat Girlz_ is great for that too.

Someone else had said they wanted to like this book. I feel the same. It's a very sluggish, difficult read. The author states throughout the book that this was pulled from her blog and interviews - and that's what it feels like. Unrelated blog entries. I'm a third of the way through the book after several weeks and I just want it to be over. Now there are some awesome points in the book which made the lightbulb go off above my head or where I felt, finally, that someone completely understood how I was feeling about a situation. I just wish more of the book was like that. I've struggled my whole life with my weight. More times unsuccessfully than successfully. I don't think I was expecting answers, but there are so many weight loss/struggle memoirs out there that get the point across much better than this. The book had so much potential and it disappointed me badly.

I read her first book and liked it and thought this would be like that but it's more a reference book because she keeps using quotes from other books about fat people. It's just not her story but stories from a blog of friends and just hard to get through.

This book has some honest, interesting stories of the struggle with obesity, but they're somewhat lost in a sea of words.

It can be quite confusing to follow as Frances writes a little about one woman (I hate to say girl), then another, and another, and then back to the first. I rarely bothered to go back and check to see which one she was writing about because I didn't care enough. I learned to identify with and care about Frances in her book Passing for Thin. If Frances just wrote books about her own life, I'd probably read them with pleasure.

Other aspects of her writing which make reading this book frustrating are her relentless analysis and classical references with many expensive words thrown in just to make it seem as though I'm reading Tolstoy instead of Kuffel. Sometimes her sentences are written in such a confusing manner (I thought about saying convoluted but I didn't want to pull a Frances!) that I felt as though I needed to read them again to try and make sense of them.

Also, I agree with some of the reviewers that her comments about her friends are quite shocking in their negativity. On meeting Lindsay for the first time, she describes her "pigeon-toed front teeth" and feels "she could have benefited from a good haircut." But many of her comments centered on character more than appearance. It's hard to imagine her friends reading the book and saying, "Good job, Frances!"

I was going to give my review the title, "More than You Ever Wanted to Know about Obesity." Weight-loss plans, weight-loss surgery, books about obesity, whether fictional or non-fictional, and the ever-growing industry that is catering to obese people so that they can have more carefree vacations are all described (although not in depth).

By the end, it's very clear that overeating is an addiction like alcohol or drugs except that, unlike alcohol and drugs, we can't abstain from food. The mood of the entire book is negative and depressing. Her account of the women's problems with men, with moods, and with food paints a picture of a losing battle. Only by the end are we able to see that Frances is adhering to her program most of the time and has a dream of improving her life.

The one thing that Frances has never explored in detail is just exactly what she eats when she is "abstinent"--unprocessed food, yes, but she never gives us a clear picture. But we hear about the sweets in great detail (in fact, it could be said that this book is dangerous to dieters as one can begin to salivate reading of Frances's favorite bedtime snacks).

I think that I agree with the reviewers who found Passing for Thin to be more focused. I've saved that book and drag it out from time to time as I feel that she writes very well. I was able to feel almost as though I were in the room when she was serving dinner to the monsignor, stealing food as she worked. I think that she is most successful in her writing when she talks about herself and her own feelings and doesn't attempt to analyze others. This book has its interesting moments, but not all of us have the patience for wading through all those words. I didn't succeed in finishing it the first time and only just recently decided to give it another try. It was slow going at times!