Two Girls Fat and Thin (Paperback)

by Mary Gaitskill (Author) "I entered the strange world of Justine Shade via a message on the bulletin board in a laundromat filled with bitterness and the hot breath..." (more)
Key Phrases: Anna Granite, Justine Shade, Wilson Bean (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This impressive but uneven novel by the author of the praised short fiction collection Bad Behavior makes promises it does not keep. Two women, totally unalike in background, personality and social class, are brought together by a shared fascination with the philosophical movement founded by the late Anna Granite (read Ayn Rand). Justine is a chic journalist who wants to write an article about the followers of Granite's philosophy, Definitism. Dorothy is an obese, nocturnal word processor who answers Justine's advertisement in Manhattan Thing and offers to be interviewed about her involvement with the Definitists. As the two women come to know each other, their dismal life experiences gradually emerge, and their present circumstances are seen as a repetition of past connections and betrayals. This is a hard, edgy book, and Gaitskill's energy and flashy intelligence notwithstanding, the perhaps deliberate lack of polish ultimately detracts. The novel's raw, unsparing view is like that of certain contemporary paintings, and there are extraordinary moments of deeply examined female sexuality where Gaitskill is at her most original. But an underdeveloped and fragmented style has not served her well with the narrative and structural demands here. Thus this distinctive novel falls short of its potential. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
It is a credit to Ms. Gaitskill's prose, with its fine storyteller's pace and brilliant metaphors, that we are drawn along, loath to abandon this grim story. -- The New York Times Book Review, Ginger Danto

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (February 27, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684843129
• ISBN-13: 978-0684843124
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #568,248 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's funny, and disturbing, because it's true ..., June 5, 1999

By	David M. Monroe ([e-mail]) (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews

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 ...

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brutal, Lovely, and Amazing, February 24, 2003

By A Customer

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fat or Thin, its still Beautiful, October 18, 2005

By	Little Old Me - See all my reviews

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.