When a married, small-town waitress is asked by a stranger who claims to have known her mother to embark on a relationship with his shy, fat friend, Gary, she is astonished to find herself falling into a tender and erotic love affair.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
An unlikely romance, a psychological mystery, an erotic thriller--Me and the Fat Man is all and none of the above, eluding categorization as skillfully as it limns its characters' desperate, love-starved lives. In Julie Myerson's third novel, Amy waits tables in a small English city and in her spare time turns tricks for reasons she can't quite articulate, even to herself. She's married, but without love or lust or much of anything else. "I like you because you don't expect anything," her husband tells her when they first meet. An orphan born in Greece, Amy grew up in a foster home that was "creepy and electric," where she was treated with ostensible fairness but always made to feel just how lucky she was that they took her in. "What's flesh and blood? Not blood and string and fat like on a joint of meat, but just this person smiling and smiling at the stupidest things about you," she muses, and thinks, "I'd have given anything for that."
Then a stranger named Harris walks into the restaurant and promises to give Amy back her past, claiming to have known her mother. Slowly he draws Amy into his life and introduces her to Gary, the gentle fat man of the title. Prompted by Harris, the two find themselves in an affair; what's surprising is that they fall in love, the last thing either of their lives has led them to expect. But Gary has secrets of his own, and is strangely in Harris's thrall. The key to both of their pasts lies on the Greek island of Eknos, where Amy's life comes spiraling together in a way that seems both improbable and true--like everything else in this novel, from its offbeat eroticism to the painful physicality of its prose. Me and the Fat Man is bleak and magical in equal measure. --Mary Park
From Publishers Weekly
As she has demonstrated in previous books, Myerson excels at creating troubled, self-destructive heroines who become embroiled in bizarre situations which Myerson describes so matter-of-factly that the disjunction between the character's life and a normal one is even more pronounced. In Sleepwalking, the reader felt as removed from reality as the protagonist; the difference here is the strong emotional involvement engendered as the circumstances of Amy's life are gradually revealed. A 27-year-old waitress in a small British town, blonde, attractive Amy feels incapable of love, never having received any parental affection during her frightening childhood. Even her new husband seems remote, a stranger. Reckless in her need to experience a thrill of emotion, she picks up men in the park, but those furtive sexual encounters leave her even more numb and detached. The secretive, untrusting Amy is intrigued when a 60ish man named Harris claims to have known and adored her mother, who was only 15 when Amy was born on a small Greek island where she had fled from England. Amy was six when her mother drowned. Half-buried memories of her childhood rise to the surface with Harris's curiously selective recollections; inforlorn gratitude, and also at Harris's bizarre urging, Amy comes on to Gary, an obese but tender man in his 20s who lives with Harris. It is Gary, surprisingly, who unlocks Amy's heart, awakening love of several kinds, but also inviting tragedy as events escalate in a relentless but stunning progression. Myerson's perfect control of narrative allows Amy to describe an erotic act in shockingly graphic terms, and in the next breath, to confess her inner desolation with poignant effect. The layers of secrets and the swell of grief that build dramatic tension may not hold up to rational scrutiny after the narrative closes, but while under its haunting spell, one cannot put this book down.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I can't get it out of my head!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Me and the Fat Man (Hardcover)
More than a week after finishing this book, I'm still thinking about it. It's a puzzle. Perhaps if I reread it, I can figure it out?Extremely well-written, sexy, perversely funny, scary and dark. Myerson is one heckuva writer. What a ride...
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow!,
This review is from: Me and the Fat Man (Hardcover)
This book is a amazing! I work in a book store and when a customer recomends a book I usually read it. I am so glad I read this one. Julie Myerson writes with honesty I only dream of writing of.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hypnotic!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Me and the Fat Man (Hardcover)
While reading "Me and the Fat Man" I kept telling myself I hated it. I didn't like any of the characters, mainly because they didn't like themselves. However, the story would not let me go--I couldn't wait to see what in the world would happen to these people next. This book is a short read and well worth the couple of hours I spent on it.
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