13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl Paperback – 10 Mar 2016

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Review "[A] beautiful, necessary book." Roxane Gay"This is a book of interconnected stories (though the vast majority are centred on Lizzie) that show you not only how she looks at herself but how others look at her and how she looks at other fat girls. It's not an easy book to read, and you should not read it hoping for learning and growth and happy endings, but there s a lot of truth in Awad's stories." Bookriot's Best Books of February 2016"This book floored me from the very first page. It's a collection of 13 stories that all feature one girl, Elizabeth/Lizzie/Beth, as she navigates her life. Elizabeth is (all at once) frank, curious, and insecure, filled with doubts about her weight, her sexuality, and the way she's perceived by others. No matter how you identify, you're sure to empathize with her in some small, secret way that you thought was only true to yourself. With tight writing, vivid characters, and narratives that spin you into them, this is a book you need to read." Bustle's Best Books of February 2016 "Honest, searing, and necessary . . . [13 Ways] peels back the curtain on the struggles of entering womanhood from body image, to relationships, to merely navigating the oh-so-cruel world." Elle, 16 Novels by Women Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2016"Mona Awad writes exactly what you're thinking, and that's one of the many reasons you're going to love her debut. . . . [13 Ways] announces her as a writer with real insight not only to the mind, but also to the heart." Bustle.com, 17 Of 2016 s Most Anticipated Books"In this dark, honest debut, Awad sharply observes everywhere from online chat rooms to office break rooms the struggles of growing up, growing out, and trying to slim down, at any cost." - Marie Claire"As Lizzy examines the body she's never loved, our thin's-in, thigh-gap-crazy world comes into focus." - Cosmo"A painfully raw and bitingly funny debut . . . [Lizzie] gets under your skin, and she stays there. Beautifully constructed; a devastating novel but also a deeply empathetic one." Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Assured and terrific." - Publishers Weekly"Touching . . . Behind the title of Awad's sharp first book, a unique novel in 13 vignettes, is brazen-voiced Lizzie, who longs for, tests, and prods the deep center of the cultural promise that thinness, no matter how one achieves it, is the prerequisite for happiness." Booklist"This book sparkles with wit and at the same time comes across as so transparent and genuine Awad knows how to talk about the raw struggles of female friendships, sex, contact, humanness, and her voice is a wry celebration of all of this at once." Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"Hilarious and cutting . . . Mona Awad has a gift for turning the everyday strange and luminous, for finding bright sparks of humor in the deepest dark. She is a strikingly original and strikingly talented new voice." Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me and The Isle of Youth"Luminous . . . full of sharp insight and sly humor . . . It seems that Mona Awad can describe the imperfect nature of any love perfectly: whether it s love between friends, between mother and daughter, husband and wife, woman and food." --Katherine Heiny, author of Single, Carefree, Mellow"The protagonist, a woman named Elizabeth living in southern Ontario, simply grows up, gains weight, loses it, gets married, gets divorced. That's it. Few novelists are comfortable with this quiet of a plot. In order to sustain it you either have to have to construct a narrator of unusual reflective capabilities, or one with an undeniably interesting characteristic, something any reader wants to know more about. And Awad opts for the latter." --The Guardian"A hilarious, heartbreaking book about the struggle for self-acceptance." --People"Blunt and funny, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is a refreshingly honest look at how society views physical appearance, how we internalize those critiques and how that affects the way we navigate the world." --Mashable"Awad deftly captures the many indignities that she - that - experience around food and weight... Simultaneously tart and tender, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is stunning." --Washington Post"Remarkable . . . committed to the most honest and painful portrayal and comprehension of what it means to be human, with all its flaws and joys." Brian Evenson, author of Fugue State and Immobility"I loved this book!" --Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans"Clever, observant tales." --The Sunday Times"The title of Mona Awad's debut novel might suggest we're just looking at fat here, but really it's a novel about obsessively hating your own flesh... You could read Lizzie-Beth-Elizabeth's life as 13 short stories and there would still be an impact, but linked together the effect is devastating." --Emerald Street"In subject and voice, there are echoes of Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman and Janice Galloway's The Trick Is to Keep Breathing, but neither has the wit of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl." --Irish Times"A look at what it's like to be fat, and not so fat, in a society obsessed with appearance, this is an honest and at times uncomfortable read. 4/5 stars" --The Bookbag"Drawing on her own experiences, Awad has written a powerful book with a very believable and relatable central character at its heart." --The Herald Scotland"Come February, you might want to thank author Mona Awad for putting on the page every thought that you ever needed words to verbalize." --Elle"As a portrait of the body-image issues and low-level eating disorders that afflict almost all American women, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is devastatingly thorough, its 13 short stories as addictive as potato chips and as painful as the prospect of eating nothing but 4-ounce portions of steamed fish for the rest of your life." --Chicago Tribune"[An] insightful debut novel... Awad's sensitive, unflinching depiction of [Lizzie's struggle] is a valuable addition to the canon of American womanhood." --TIME"Awad writes powerfully about the all-consuming nature of weight loss and body image." --The Rumpus About the Author Mona Awad received her MFA in Fiction from Brown University, where she was awarded the Feldman and John Hawkes prizes for her short stories. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's, The Walrus, Joyland, Post Road, St. Petersburg Review and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Denver.