Customer Reviews

Fat, Forty, and Fired: One Man's Frank, Funny, and Inspiring Account of Losing His Job and Finding His Life

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I had picked up this book hoping for a funny and inspiring story of someone finding himself after a job loss. Unfortunately, I found Fat, Forty and Fired to be tired and somewhat simplistic. The author came across as overly privileged and frankly, whiny. For example, gosh, he had to fly coach using some of his frequent flyer miles during a trip to Europe! And seats only reclined an inch or two! Plus they had to fire the nanny (although the wife already stayed at home). Yawn.

This is on top of short chapters and a stunning lack of detail.

It was disappointing to see how quickly he went back to some of his old ways at the end of the book. Didn't even make the swim race he had talked about for some fifty pages or so throughout the book.

Even more concerning are the rest of the reviews on Amazon. I find it hard to to see how everyone else gave this book 5 stars. But I see 13 of the 16 other reviewers have only this one review to their name. Nigel's friends and family perhaps?

This book was not nearly as entertaining as I had expected. There were some funny bits and I really related to Nigel's struggles with the children, but overall I was quite disappointed. To begin with, the story is non-linear, jumping back and forth from past to present and making it a little confusing to read. There was a lot of the 'whinging pom' attempt at humour, which was also off putting. The majority of the time spent reading this, I was a bit bored. This is a take-it-or-leave-it kind of book.

This book is easy to read and very entertaining. I highly recommend it. I have only one criticism. Nigel Marsh is not some poor smuck who was fired from his average job. He is an extremely well educated, intellegent man who was able at age forty to correct some things about his life that needed fixing by not working for about 10 months. As a father, I had the same day dream when my children were small. I admire Mr. Marsh for being able to make his day-dream come true. I don't think it would have worked out as well for me or many other folks. Still, those ten months were great for Mr. Marsh and his family.

This is a story not everyone can identify with. A man's life of privilege, nannies for his kids,
business class travel on planes, rich relatives etc, loses his job for ten months, makes some worthwhile changes to his life, then goes right back to his privileged life and new job.

I found a lot of this book boring but parts of it were interesting, like the descriptions of Sydney make the city sound very attractive and livable.The story of the author's alcoholism and his recovery from it seemed sincere and inspirational to others with that problem. I did not care however for the totally unecessary bad language and swearing throughout the book . It did not add anything to the story, just the opposite. i would have liked the book better without it.

This book is an easy read, and funny in many places. But the author's high income level (especially in these tight economic times) can make the lifestyle portrayed in the book seem distinctly foreign to those who lead more modest lives. How many families can afford a nanny, or a $600 stroller? How many people could afford to take several vacations - including world-spanning vacations - when they are out of work and supporting a family of six?

Mr. Marsh appears to be so accustomed to the privileges his income level allows (CEO of a major advertising firm), that while he mouths the platitudes, he simply has no idea of how most of the non-privileged people in the world live. This is less distinct at the beginning of the book, but becomes more and more evident the further one reads. At one point, he reports being astounded at the discomfort and inconveniences suffered by having to fly tourist-class, rather than first-class, and completely misses the point that many people can no longer afford to fly at all, even if both parents are working full-time and somehow manage to actually get vacation at the same time!

Perhaps it's because a lot has to be left out in a short book, or perhaps it's because I'm female and tend to notice these things, but it seemed that even after he left his job, Mr. Marsh spent a lot of time *on vacation from his family*, and spent a lot of (supposedly scarce) money on just himself and his own wants. His wife continued to perform most of the work around the house, which he finds somewhat humorous. By the end of the book, I simply found the man to be incredibly selfish. I no longer cared whether he accomplished his goals, but wondered what his wife's goals might have been, and what he'd done to help her accomplish them.

So in sum, I would have to say that the beginning of the book is funny, and by the end I simply disliked the author.

I absolutely loved this book. As a woman married to a workaholic husband, I really connected to Nigel's story about trying to rediscover who he is and navigate life on his own terms. I've already given the book to my husband to read, and have been busy recommending it to all of my friends, male and female, who have lost the balance between work and life!

It seemed like a good idea for a book, but just wasn't all that inspiring to me. There is a lot of documenting the daily life kinda thing, and how he gets back in touch with his kids. Overall, it felt like a diary, and not a great one at that.

On the plus side it seems well edited and proof read - which is always appreciated.

I honestly felt like I was reading a blog... Ordinary at best. The notion is interesting at first but then each chapter is rather superficial. The author just skims every topic as he makes a mad dash from one to the next.

On the topic of chapters... I know it can be interesting to tie in the beginning with a cool loop to the ending of a chapter, but every time? For the love of variety, please spice it up dude.

I am currently going through a year like this and was hoping to find some kind of kinship. Didn't happen. Couldn't even finish the book...

I enjoyed this book overall. The beginning was pretty funny with some laugh out loud moments; however, the middle got a bit boring, and I found myself skimming. It picked up towards the end of the book, and overall it was a fairly entertaining read. It was a free offering for the Kindle, so it was worth reading. It was a quick read and had a really good moral message.

Oh, the poor CEO who "discovers" that he's an alcoholic and has trouble relating to the children he's neglected over the years. Um....the only thing humorous about this book is that the author seems to think that he's done something extraordinary by using his unintended forced absence from the workforce to gain new insight about what he was missing by pouring himself into his work for many years. Really? Many people have done this over the past few years with much more grace and less self aggrandizement.

For some of us it was the loss of our jobs and identities during middle age - when we had planned to parlay our decades of experience into making some real cash. For others of us, it was coming back from a war where brutality and violence were tools for daily use. Our lives were in constant danger and we lost good friends and people we relied on to keep each other alive until we got home. We got home to an environment for which we were ill-prepared and which was as foreign to us as Iraq or Afghanistan had originally been.

This is not a motivational book except for perhaps the millionaires who have had to become "hundred-thousandaires" as a result of our poor economy. Grow up. If your wife has to beg you to not have a glass of wine, go to a meeting, save your whine for them, but don't ask people to shell out money to read your sob story.