Fat (GollanczF.) (Hardcover)

~ Rob Grant (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Both hilarious and intelligent. Fat is an ambitious picture of a society where greed fights a never-ending battle with the struggle for a slim, well-toned body. The fashion in which Rob Grant juggles his characters as they pursue their disparate destinies has the invention of a novelist from a very different generation: Evelyn Waugh." -- Barry Forshaw THE EXPRESS "If there's a message here, it's to throw away the diet book and embrace your sexy swagger. Considering Rob Grant is a fat bloke himself, his portrayal of Hayleigh and her anorexia is a complete triumph. She's the real heart of the story and Grant charts her rapid decline with both insight and humour." -- Henry Sutton DAILY MIRROR "Grant's made a leap forward as an author here. Thought-provoking, moving and hilarious." -- Guy Haley SFX "Incisive, bitingly funny and thought provoking. Grant is a funny writer with a knack for some wicked one-liners. A novel that should make everyone sit up and think." BIRMINGHAM POST "You could accuse Rob Grant of having an axe to grind. He is, after all, no stick insect himself. But in the bitingly satirical FAT, he raise so many thought-provoking points about body image and the scare stories we're given about health issues, you have to admit he's done his homework. Besides which, when a book's this funny, what's wrong with a bit of axe grinding?" -- Dave Golder BBC FOCUS "A roller coaster ride with plenty of laughs and much to recommend it." WOOD & VALE Grant crafts a good read out of a subject clearly close to his heart. A satirical bite worthy of Ben Elton." -- Dean Patrick DREAMWATCH "Though vaguely similar in approach to Ben Elton's novels, it is a funny book. He crushes the cholesterol lie, the salt myth, the BMI con and a few other epidemiological scams based on shoddy statistics and rubbishy thinking - all for our own good, of course." -- Andrew McKie THE TELEGRAPH "A tasty trim novel that hasn't been superfluously fleshed out." -- Ed Perkins The Daily Echo "Grant's knack of injecting humour into the bleakest scenario makes for a read that's as addictive as an MSG-laced takeaway." IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY "There's plenty of food for thought to chew over here: while it may not satisfy the appetite for 'Red Dwarf' fans, it's way beyond mere fast food fiction. An interesting read." VENUE

Product Description

Rob Grant's new novel is a revelation. After INCOMPETENCE we would all have expected a killingly funny satire. And in its satire of our obsession with body image, of how the media makes us what we are FAT is certainly that. But in its depiction of Grenville, a fat man at his wits end with the need to be thin; of Hayleigh, a teenage girl obsessed with her terror of being fat and of Jeremy, the self-absorbed, self-adoring 'conceptualist' employed to promote the government's new 'Fat Farms' Rob Grant has given us, yes a very, very funny book, but also an immensely moving and personal novel about how we all feel about our bodies. As Grenville deals with the humilation and daily indignity of being fat, as Hayleigh struggles to deal with her anorexia and as Jeremy comes to terms with the dangerous lies at the centre of the government's new health regime FAT takes us on a hilarious and thought-provoking journey through our all-consuming obession with fat. This is a hilariously moving, movingly hilarious novel and marks a massive step-change in Rob Grant's growth as a writer. Here is a hugely commerical new voice in mainstream, high concept, high in poly-saturates, commercial fiction. It's also safe to say that with this new novel, he's writing about what he knows ...

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Gollancz (December 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575074205
• ISBN-13: 978-0575074200
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,214,233 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One to Consume, April 25, 2007

By	James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Fat is follows the events of three different people. Grenville is a TV chef with anger management problems who has stacked on the kilograms over the years and is now quite obese, no longer able to find anything other than sport tracksuits on the racks that fit him anymore. One day he decides to do something about this so signs up to his local gym. His treatment and the way he deals with this along with the events following makes for some fun reading. Jeremy Slank fancies himself as a bit of a ladies man, he's very good as his job as a conceptuologist and knows it. The British prime minister has asked him to help market the new Well Farms which are camps that will help the obese get back to normal and stop being a burden on taxpayers. Hayleigh has an eating disorder and is the serious third of this storyline. All storylines ultimately cross at one time or another in what is a very interesting and at times hilarious book. I'll definitely check out other books by this author.

Other similar authors include Max Barry, John O'Farrell and Bill Fitzhugh, check them out as well.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Had potential..., April 5, 2007

By	Cybamuse (Fuzzy Europe) - See all my reviews

Being one half of the team that wrote Red Dwarf, you'd expect nothing less than to be chortling right to the end of this book. Didn't really quite turn out that way. True, Grant's book is probably the 'lightest' read of all the books coming out lately which seem to dwell on characters who are physically larger than life. But... To be honest, the only bit that made me laugh was the caption giving his bio under his image on the back cover...

"Fat" follows 3 people all waging some war with weight. I will admit this book (unintentionally?) gave a very interesting and thought provoking insight into the morbidly obese. I also learnt some very interesting facts about boiling an egg... But the two 'extreme' characters were so extreme it got, well, tedious reading them as they went through this 'moment' in their lives as Grant went into painfully nitty gritty detail. For a funny book, it was to nitty gritty. Interesting, but ultimately, not very funny.

As to the 3rd character, well this character was clearly a vehicle for 'setting the record straight.' And I would have been fine with that as well (having read it all before), if it hasn't been written so, well, chest-thumping and pulpit pounding. It does strike me that a lot of western governments are focusing on using things which ultimately aren't the doom and end of the planet as a way to provoke fear in us. And weight is one of those issues... I mean, when it comes to weight, what I don't understand is why no one is questioning all the chemicals and hormones the big companies are putting into our food as a source of why we can't shift weight like we used to a generation ago??? Is there a bigger cover up - by trying to shift the blame onto us not 'exercising enough' and not'eating healthy' - are the big companies trying to dodge that bullet of 'gosh guys, maybe if you (big company) didn't put growth hormone in all cows and chickens, we might not be porking out so much?? Well, that question wasn't addressed at all!

But I digress, that isn't what Rob Grant was trying to display in this book. In the end, all he seems to have produced a quite readable, admitedly unputdownable book - but I would attribute that more to the old "end the chapter in a cliffhanger' technique than any true desire to keep turning pages. I guess its tough in a way - if you don't have a serious weight issue, in a way you can't really relate to the characters - largely because you get every thought spelt out in painful detail - and so even if there is humour in what Grant is writing about, you don't really care to much about the characters. I might have cared more if Grant had created more outrageous circumstances surrounding the characters - and not dwelled so much on the inner agonising of the characters.

4.0 out of 5 stars Laugh Out loud funny, August 21, 2008

By	Marc A. Laplante - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Maybe Grant writes for a niche audience, but I find his work to be both funny and insightful. His characters are absurd, but the same way that the fellow down the hall at work or the neighbour up the block may well be.. or maybe even we would appear to others if they were viewing us without any of the social barriers we use to protect our privacy. Grant creates an social and political environment where the obese become social pariah, and his novel's three main characters provide some opposing views on the whole concept of body image and (mental) health. The take off on the Tony Blair-ish British PM is bang-on, while the character of the budding bulimic teen was handled with considerable empathy as well as a healthy dose of humour.
I have followed Grant's work, post-"Red Dwarf", and this is his best yet. just be cautious of reading it in a public place, because you will "LOL".