Customer Reviews

Two Girls, Fat and Thin

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Mary Gaitskill's Two Girls, Fat and Thin is a brilliantly satiric but nonetheless disturbingly realistic story of how cults appeal to the alienated and confused precisely by providing them with a sense of belonging and simple answers to complex questions. And, given the mixed messages they receive daily about gender, sexuality, identity, empowerment and the body (see any issue of YM, for example, or, for that matter, Cosmopolitan), it's hard to imagine anyone with greater potential for alienation and confusion that the adolescent American female. In Gaitskill's hilariously parodic roman a clef, the two girls of the title, "fat" Dorothy and "thin" Justine, are taken in by the "Definitivist" philosophy of one Anna Granite, in a transparently veiled, hysterically accurate spoof of Ayn Rand's "Objectivism." Anyone who's suffered through Rand's didactic, overwrought novels will be delighted by such details, such parodies within the parody, as Granite's fictional fictions, The Bulwark and The Gods Disdained. And given the essential similarities between Granite and Rand, Definitivism and Objectivism, Gaitskill's novel makes it difficult to see how anybody takes the latter seriously, although the Rand cult continues apace nonetheless (see Jeff Walker's excellent study, The Ayn Rand Cult [LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1999]). It's funny, and disturbing, beacuse it's true ...

This is a dark, nasty novel. I enjoyed the switching of POV and voice (the fat girl, Dorothy, is told in the 1st person while the thin girl, Justine, is told in the 3rd person limited). The voices fit the characters -- Dorothy is a much more forthcoming person, one who's had time and the desire to reflect upon her life, so the pseudo-confessional makes sense. The same can't be said for Justine, so the distance created by the 3rd person is a perfect fit.

The material in here is heinous stuff -- kids/people torturing one another, S&M, incest, childhood sexual abuse, stuff that Jerry Springer might not even touch -- but because of Gaitskill's powers of observation, I just couldn't help but to read and savor every word. I'd put her mastery of the language at about the same level as Franzen.

The main thing that distracted me from the main narrative was the Ayn Rand/Objectivism stuff, especially toward the end when things are really heating up and every peripheral discussion about Definitism (Gaitskill's version) sinks the emotion down a couple of notches. But I forgive her. It's an unpleasant story told with beauty and compassion, and although the ending may be a tad melodramatic, I was glad and thankful for it. After being put through so much pain, it was a relief to bask in the tiny sliver of happiness.

In the end, it really isn't a traditional novel, more like an accumulation of sketches, but I felt a whole lot throughout. For me, it worked.

What I found most interesting about this book was the obvious and yet not so obvious parallels between the two protagonists. One is fat and one is thin. Both are unhappy and twisted up about their weight, their goals and their relationships or lack thereof. Both were molested as children, both were neglected by their parents - one is fat - the other is thin!

But truly the book is much more complex than the contrasts and similarities between the two main characters. The weaker one saves the one we perceive to be the stronger.

This is an unexpected story in that the characters do not turn out to be what they seem to be. Interestingly, one is writing about a woman, now dead, although named something other than Ayn Rand (Anna Granite), is Ayn Rand! How interesting to spin a story around two women who are not the best they can possibly be, but who seem to be equally interested in a writer who glorifies the individual who single-mindedly pursues attaining one's best. And of course, these two are at their worst for most of the book. Yet, their worst is their best, given what they have both been through.

The writing is clear, insightful and well-paced. You feel for these two women, who do not seem to be able to feel for themselves.

Just like her short story collection, Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill's novel, Two Girls Fat and Thin, left me speechless. The story seemed simple enough: the thin girl is interviewing the fat girl about her time working for the author/cult leader, Anna Granite. They are both wary of each other, the interviewer thinks the interviewee is crazy and the interviewee feels that her entire belief system is under attack by the interviewer. But in the end a strange friendship/bond/understanding will form between the two of them.

But its so much more than that.

While I completely appreciate all the goofy reincarnation of Ayn Rand (can I assume that she's the object of ridicule throughout the book!?), I can't help but be drawn into the actual lives of Dorothy and Justine. Dorothy's affiliation with a literary cult leader seems almost unnecessary, though executed perfectly. However its the `compare and contrast' of these two women's lives that really makes the story - how they are terribly different physically and emotionally, BUT how they are also very similar. They both share strange and horrible relationships with their parents, were both molested as young children and have finally achieved a sense of independence just before their meeting. You get complete character dissections of each of them: what they want, what they think they want and what they already had. Where both women have unresolved unresolved conflicts from their past, its too late to doing anything about them. It seems that their acquaintanceship, while mistrustful at first is their stepping stone to personal redemption.

Mary Gaitskill is yet again justly perverse and sexual, especially through Justine and her trysts through childhood and her current ill-suited lover and sadist, Bryan. Dorothy recounts her painful years of being an overweight girl growing up and only finding acceptance within Anna Granite's circle.

Two Girls, Fat and Thin is an amazing book - with very wise and witty language. There are many moments when Gaitskill sums up in a few words everything you need to know about what creates strong relationships between strangers. These are not stereotypical characters, these are not trite and uncomplicated scenes. For a book that will give you a lot to think about and won't require a dictionary to get through, you can't go wrong.

Mary Gaitskill's 2 short story collections "Bad Behaviour" and "Because They Wanted To," were both innovative. Her first novel, "Two Girls, Fat and Thin," while a dramatic and revealing tale, can't seem to leave the short story form behind. Each section is written with grace, but at the same time, seem to be their own individual story, making the plot disconnected and hard to follow. The ending is emotional, but seems to be without resolution. Overall, the idea is a good one, but the short story convention needs to be shed for it to be delivered smoothly.

I thought this was an excellent book, but I fail to see that any careful reader could conclude that the author is sympathetic to Rand's views, as some of the previous reviewers suggested. I found it to be a devastating satire of the bombast and cruelty of so-called Objectivism.

Most people will read this book for the intriguing way Gaitskill unfolds the characters relationship to their own sexuality and self image. The excerpt from this book that wasy in the anthology High Risk even focuses there and those qualities are supreme in this novel.

But truth be told what I enjoyed most was her treatment of the Objectionist movement - she did a marvelous job of parodying it and pointing out how some people's ego can obscure the entire points they are trying to make.

If you haven't read this book, please do! It succeeds on so many different levels!!

A meticulous graceful and merciless exploration of the inner worlds of young women coping with an abusive past is connected to the wider reality in the context of Ayn Rand's objectivism. This is an ingenious chimera and it definitely adds to the eerieness of the novel. Gaitskill has a microscopic scrutiny of human behvior and emotions combined with unique lingual ability to render them in full force. Her treatment of what is apparntly Objectivism by Ayn Rand is not unsympathetic (in my view). She approaches well trodden fields such as individuality, social convention and power relations in a fresh way. It does not detract from the psychological aspects of the novel and its protean literary auqlities. The degree of lonliness depicted seems unrealistic unless taken metaphorically for alienation. As a male reader I find it difficult to accept the role relegated to my sex in the novel. Few readers will look at their own childhood the same. One need not be a survivor of abuse. To the contrary. A familiar, yet well suppressed, experiences such as witnessing one's mother farting is reconnected to all the hidden mesh of one's intimate and unavoidable reality.

I must admit that I have been waiting to read this book for some time now, as I have read Mary. G.'s two books of short stories and found them quite enjoyable -- and at times erotic -- so I was pleased that her only novel was finally reprinted. The novel is well written -- and follows familiar themes she has explored in her short stories. Is this book worth investing time with? If you enjoyed The Book of Ruth, or She's Come Undone, you'll enjoy this one too, as the themes are familiar (women who feel out of touch with society). You might also try Harrison's Thicker Than Water (not her latest work). Also note that Ayn Rand shows up in Two Girls..as a fictional character who plays a major role. Even the statue of Atlas with the world on his shoulders from the cover of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged shows up in a n office here. Rand's philosophy (Objectivism) is also discussed at length in her, as well as thinly disguised books she wrote (We The Living, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). It's all very amusing, and if you were a fan of Rand you'll get the reference. If not it doesn't detract.

The fact that Gaitskill poses in interviews and photographs as a former call girl and stripper is the tip off, to me, that what is being performed in this book is far from authentic.

My fellow readers, whom I trust, billed this as a satire of Ayn Rand and objectivism, which I was excited to read.

But the many tiny flicks and gigantic chunks of s'n'm bs, so well-burnished you know the author was getting off instead of writing, offended me intensely.

I stopped reading at page 94 at the throwaway metaphor, "like an animal with its legs hacked off."

No.