13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl - Softcover

Awad, Mona

3.06

16,209 ratings by Goodreads

9780143194798: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143194798 ISBN 13: 9780143194798

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 2016

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Winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Longlisted for the 2017 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour
Longlisted for the 2018 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks—even though her best friend Mel says she’s the pretty one. She starts dating guys online, but she’s afraid to send pictures, even when her skinny friend China does her makeup: she knows no one would want her if they could really see her. So she starts to lose. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted dresses. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror. But no matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?

In her brilliant, hilarious, and at times shocking debut, Mona Awad simultaneously skewers the body image-obsessed culture that tells women they have no value outside their physical appearance, and delivers a tender and moving depiction of a lovably difficult young woman whose life is hijacked by her struggle to conform. As caustically funny as it is heartbreaking, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl introduces a vital new voice in fiction.

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About the Author:

Mona Awad’s first book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. It was named one of the most anticipated books of 2016 by Elle, Bustle, and The Globe and Mail, and it was named one of the best books of the month by the Huffington Post, Bustle, and Book Riot. The National Post chose it as one of their best books of 2016, and it was longlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. Mona received her MFA in fiction from Brown University. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Walrus, Joyland, Post Road, St. Petersburg Review, and many other journals. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing and English literature at the University of Denver.

She knows I’ve been coveting the von Furstenberg ever since I first stood on the other side of her shop window, watching her slip it over a white, nippleless mannequin, looping some ropes of fake pearls around its headless neck. I didn’t know it was a von Furstenberg then. I only knew it was precisely the sort of dress I dreamed of wearing when I used to eat muffins in the dark and watch Audrey Hepburn movies. Before I knew brands, I’d make lists of the perfect dresses – and when I saw this dress it was like someone, perhaps even God, had found the list and spun it into existence. Cobalt, formfitting, with a V in the front and one in the back. Cute little bows all down the butt crack, like your ass is a present. The sort of dress I’d wish to wear to attend the funeral of my former self, to scatter the ashes of who I was over a cliff’s edge.

“Can I try this on?” I asked her.

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