THREE mini books all in one! This fabulously funny series of books features Mary Brown who is funny, gorgeous and bonkers. She’s also about six stone overweight. When she realises she can’t cross her legs, has trouble bending over to tie her shoelaces without wheezing like an elderly chain-smoker, and discovers that even her hands and feet look fat, it’s time to take action. But what action? … She’s tried every diet under the sun. Must be time for her to get herself enrolled in Fat Club.
The stories are laugh-out-loud funny and will resonate with anyone who has dieted, tried to keep up with any sort of exercise programme, or spent 10 minutes in a changing room trying to extricate herself from a way too-small garment that she ambitiously tried on and is now completely stuck in.
Bernice Bloom is the big, new name in comedy writing…
The books:
Book one explores her time on the first fat Club course, book two looks at her burgeoning romance and the problems of daily life when you’re heavily over weight and book three is the hysterical story of what happens when the second course of ‘Fat Club’ starts and she reunites with the cast of funny characters.
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Favorite Quotes:
Sorry, it might sound like a horrible thing to say, but when I was sweet and pretty and slim, men opened doors. Now they take one look at me bulldozing my way down the street and think ‘well that one can clearly open the door herself – blimey she might take the whole thing off its hinges’… The day you can’t squeeze into your size 16 jeans is the day you learn to open doors for yourself.
I wanted the fish and chips like I’ve never wanted anything in my life before, but I reined myself in. I could easily nick some of Ted’s chips instead, everyone knows that the calories don’t count if they are contained in food nicked from someone else’s plate.
“This is the stupidest thing ever to happen to me in my whole, entire life.” I just shrugged. It wasn’t the stupidest thing to have happened to me that week, so I wasn’t in a position to comment.
Most beauticians think they’re scientists… And I was absolutely sure that every time they covered my face in something like mashed up beetle’s’ legs, sea moss and elephant’s semen that I’d emerge looking like Cameron Diaz. That was the thing about going to the beauticians – it was all about the hope.
Honestly, bringing out weighing scales at a Fat Club was like bringing out a hand grenade or a venomous snake. I noticed that Janice had physically recoiled from the sight of it.
My Review:
Originally written as three separate novella type installments for a six-part series, I giggle-snorted my way through this delightfully amusing yet insightfully written tale of a dramatic, Queen-Sized, Calamity Jane type named Mary. Mary was a trouble-magnet of the most unusual variety, yet she meant well, most of the time. Mary had acquired a weight problem following a vaguely referenced traumatic event in her teens, and while she had attempted and failed many diets, she was frustrated with herself and driven to join her first group-oriented approach, a group she called “Fat Club.” She made new friends with a few of the members and a special friend indeed with Ted, a sweet man whose kind heart was as large as his appetite. I enjoyed the premise, adored the quirky characters, and was highly entertained and charmed by Ms. Bloom’s observantly insightful, colorfully descriptive, and humorous writing style. Much to my merriment, Mary repeatedly found herself in the most unusual and comical of predicaments. The ending of this book felt rather abrupt until I realized the story had not concluded but had reached a satisfactory for-now stopping point in the middle of the series, as there were three more installments remained. And between giggles, I fell upon a new addition for my Brit vocabulary list with “cack-handed” – which according to Urban Dictionary means “an awkward or inept way of doing something; originally meaning left-handed, stemming from cultures that use their right hand to eat and their left hand to wipe their behind.” I am eagerly looking forward to more cack-handed adventures as I already have Cruise with an Adorable Fat Girl waiting for me on my Kindle. And, my apologies to any southpaws who may accidentally stumble upon this silly little review.