Customer Reviews

The Makedown

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I could not put The Makedown DOWN! What a great read. I laughed and smiled the whole way through. I was looking for a fresh new story to read and was I got just that from this book as it was entertaining and fun. Gitty is such a witty author and I can't wait to read more of her work!

I admit, chick lit is not my favorite genre, but this book goes a long way to changing my mind. This book is chick lit with an edge - entertaining and funny!

Ok as a huge fan of My Fair Lady and Pygmalion I had to read this and it's HILARIOUS! Pokes fun at all the conventions we use to measure a good catch. Anna is a funny, silly, clever and totally relatable hero!! Totally enjoyed this!!!!!!

Television has Tina Fey and now the book world had Gitty Daneshvari! I was sooooo floored by this book! Not only is it hilarious, but it's amazingly relatable! This is totally going to be the next book that we read in my book club. My girlfriends need a good laugh in these tough times!

Anna comes from a completely dysfunctional family. Her father leaves the family for his secretary. Her mother is addicted to QVC. Her brother is a masturbation addict. What is Anna's vice? Eating. She is morbidly obese.
Then, she meets a former fatty (her description, not mine). This woman turns Anna's life around. Anna ends up looking good in the end, but inside, she is still a fatty. She lands a hot boyfriend, but she is always scared to lose him to another girl--someone prettier. She comes up with the idea of The Makedown.
I did not think her plan was feasible, not even in fiction. I was so wrong.
My sides hurt. This book made me laugh out loud so many times, that I ache. This is pure mindless chick lit. The humor is bliss.

I stumbled across The Makedown and set my expectations accordingly, knowing it fell well outside my normal "genre." I wasn't 30 pages in when I noticed that one word kept reverberating in my head, distracting me completely: remarkable! This book if flat-out remarkable!

Daneshvari's use of language is out of this world. Subtle, complex, clever, layered, introspective, extrospective, all sorts of 'spectives, and above all, just plain hilarious. There are parts of this book that made me laugh. The sort of uncontrollable laughter often reserved only for really good Peter Sellers movies. Rarely an analogy I would use to describe a book. But it fits. I thought this review, at best, would say things like "great for this *type* of book" or maybe "what a neat *guilty pleasure*." But that just wouldn't be true. This book is great, period. And it is a pleasure, period.

The book is the story of Anna. And unless you fall into the "10% genetically lucky" (poorly paraphrasing Daneshvari), you know Anna. You may BE Anna. She's not happy with her weight, or her hair, or her face, or her cloths, or her. And the more she's reminded of her looks the less she does about it. Then she finds New York and the promise of a new her. Then she finds Ben who is just too good to be true, and in love with her. But the years of neurosis remain, even with the new and improved Anna, and she can't be comfortable with herself enough to let Ben love her. As he comes to embody what everyone wants to be but can't, Anna, along with the reader, decides to bring him down a notch. For "his own good." And The Makedown begins. The results are hilarious to say the least, and a strong commentary on our lives at its best.

Beyond the overt hilarity of the book lies an intricate analysis that tries to make sense of the absurdity of the modern human condition. The thousands of external stimuli that go into constructing our psyche seem deconstructed here. An intimate portrayal of the hardships of self-evaluation we each go through everyday. I urge any reader to not find at (very) least one aspect of Anna to relate to. Buried underneath incredibly clever writing is the totally relatable truth that we; men, women, children, and adults find very hard admit. A lot of times, we just f'en hate ourselves. How do you deal with such a hard world when that's how you wake up to in the morning? Well, ask Fatty, 'er, I mean Anna. In a Kafka'n twist the cerebral masochism that flourishes in our modern society takes on a very real, very justifiable turn as Anna's self inflected ugliness turns external. As she turns sadists, blurring the line between self-preservation and vengeance, we, the reader, have our moral foundations blurred. Are we routing for Anna to keep her Ben? Or are we routing for Anna to destroy him? Either way, Go Anna go!

Hello Fatty,

Buy this book. Read this book. Love this book!

Best, Guy.

What a great, fun read this was! I was laughing out loud in the first few pages and never stopped.
First time author Gitty Daneshvari is a very funny writer!

Anna Norton is 'that kid' in school. You know - ostracized because she's the smart one, but with greasy hair, bad skin, uncool clothes and also overweight (by quite a bit). Her family is also more than a little bit nuts. After university Anna decides to make a break for it and move to New York where no one knows her.The only job she can find is with a private caterer. The owner - Janice - turns out to be - in Anna's words her FG (Fairy Godmother). Janice herself is a self described FF (Former Fatty). With her help Anna changes. Then she meets Ben - and falls madly in love. The problem is that so does every woman that meets him. So Anna decides to make him over, well make him down. Make him so no other woman will want him. I won't go any further into the plot, but things don't go quite as planned.....

Populated with laugh out loud characters, dialogue and situations, Daneshvari has penned a chick lit book that will have you giggling on the couch until you turn the last page. The Makedown is a great rainy day read.

For the first hundred pages of the book, Anna is fat and self-loathing. She is teased and shunned everywhere she goes, and writes hateful diary entries to herself in a book called Dear Fatty. When she goes to New York City to jump-start her life, she meets the Fairy Godmother she'd been searching for all those years. Janice, a caterer, hires Anna and puts her to work walking all over New York to gather ingredients. Janice also starts Anna on healthy eating and water, plus buys her clothes so she'll feel better about herself in the meantime.

Janice's plan works and Anna gets skinny. She is still just as insecure though, and it shows. When she is first asked out by Ben, she believes it's either a joke or a pity date. After some time together, she still cannot believe he actually likes her. Ben is the epitome of hotness, so much so that everywhere he goes, both women and men fall all over him. He loves the attention so he smiles back, which freaks Anna out to no end. Convinced he will leave her for someone more attractive, Anna decides to sabotage him so women will not find him as handsome.

She then starts doing the most horrid things to the poor guy, focusing on ruining his hair, clothes, and weight. As her plan finally starts to come to fruition, that's when the book gets funny: the way Ben reacts to the secret manipulation. It's hilarious. On one end, I can understand why Anna would be worried: Ben flirts with everyone, he tried to feel her up while watching a tv special about the now grown & legal Olsen twins from Full House, and wanted to watch a movie just because the actress in it, Jessica Biel, is hot. I'd probably get jealous too. I just don't think I'd handle it the way she did.

I know where Anna was coming from, I've yo-yo'ed weight-wise my entire adult life. I've hated my body and been incredibly insecure with horrible self esteem. Even so, I never once thought to write mean things to myself in a derogatory journal or be so self-destructive or selfish. I have a hard time relating to Anna or liking her because of her actions, but I can understand them, and this book is raw, honest, and screwed up ... in a way that still manages to be very entertaining. In the end, I came to respect Anna, and to really like this book.

This was a fun escapist read. Just like how you personally wouldn't ever do half the things BRIDGET JONES would do you can also somehow relate well The Makedown's Anna Norton is that same way. You enjoy reading about this character journey. The author has a great dark sense of humour and I often found myself laughing out loud at times plus it's a really quick read. I'm telling all my friends to go read this book!

Rating: 4.5

"The Makedown" begins with memories of Anna Norton's life as an overweight, geeky, friendless teen and tales of her eccentric family. Anna decides to take drastic measures to change her fate and moves from her small town in Ohio to New York City. There she begins working in a catering business, where her boss becomes a personal mentor and health coach, forcing her to get in shape and helping her shed all her extra fat. Though not as glamorous or good-looking as the other women of Manhattan, Anna begins to gain some confidence and manages to attract the attention of a very handsome bachelor named Ben. Unfortunately, Anna is not the only one who admires Ben's good looks and she finds herself feeling insecure and jealous as other women constantly flirt with her boyfriend. One day Anna devises a plan to make Ben less attractive and therefore less competition for his attention - hence the makedown.

While I have to admit the book's plot sounds a little ridiculous, the execution is really well done and this book turned out to be even better than I thought! I love Gitty Daneshvari's writing style and her flawless choice of words. I also loved the humor in every situation, especially Anna's semi-delusional mother, whose personality merits another book all about her!

Throughout the beginning part of the book, I felt badly for Anna and the way the other kids tormented her. I really sympathized with her and wanted things to improve. Then once she lost the weight, I was relieved that she didn't magically transform into a beauty queen or become conceited. It was very realistic that Anna's insecurities did not disappear and dating the epitome of male perfection would inevitably bring the insecurities to the surface.

Surprisingly enough, even when Anna was fattening Ben up and putting Nair in his shampoo, I still loved her as a character. I thought Ben was way too stuck-up and in some ways deserved to see how it felt to be less than god-like in appearance. Of course the makedown doesn't go as planned and with time, Anna learns her lesson and is a better person because of her experiences.

My only complaint is that I wish the book didn't fast forward in the end because I would have loved to see what happened in between but I did think it was a good ending. This book was humorous and even witty at points, and certainly a lot of fun.

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