Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
I'm torn on what to give this. I was thoroughly enjoying it, I love Shriver's writing in all the books I have read by her, and the subject of obesity I also found very readable. I found the main character and her brother very interesting, although her husband annoying and a bit flat, and the overall story engaging.
And then, bamn, the ending. I found it firstly disappointing and frustrating (don't you just hate those "it was all a dream" moments?) I considered giving it 2 or 3 stars because I was so annoyed. Upon reflection this type of ending does work in the story and now I am over my initial anger it was effective and ultimately has not ruined a book I did very much enjoy.
And then, bamn, the ending. I found it firstly disappointing and frustrating (don't you just hate those "it was all a dream" moments?) I considered giving it 2 or 3 stars because I was so annoyed. Upon reflection this type of ending does work in the story and now I am over my initial anger it was effective and ultimately has not ruined a book I did very much enjoy.
Great read. I had some difficulty getting started. Once I got the voice of Pandora in my head, I found "Big Brother" engaging and difficult to put down. I tried to figure out how the story would end throughout the book, but the actual ending never entered my mind.
I almost gave this a 4 star, because of the ending, but the first few chapters were a little hard to get into, and there were several paragraphs that I think should have been edited. Still, an interesting take on what is one of societies biggest issues (pun intended).
I was just so-so on this book until I got to the end, and kinda had the rug pulled out under me (any more info on that would be a spoiler). Also knowing the author's personal history to this topic made it a sad sad book.
Content aside, her writing style took some acclimating. Her phrasing can be needlessly complicated (in my opinion) so it took me a while to adopt her rhythm. Worthy read overall, though.
Content aside, her writing style took some acclimating. Her phrasing can be needlessly complicated (in my opinion) so it took me a while to adopt her rhythm. Worthy read overall, though.
This isn't a new book so I'm going to go ahead and spoil it to pieces, because while I didn't really like it, I found it bearable. It took longer to read, at 10 days, than any other Lionel Shriver I've tried because it's not particularly interesting. A woman who hasn't seen her brother in 4 years is when he arrives for a visit weighing, by her estimation, close to 400 pounds. This is the entire story, really. Her older brother is morbidly obese, and this is a problem for her and her husband. To the extent that she feels the need to "warn" the employees of her own company before introducing them to him. In Iowa. And this is a book first published in 2013, well after the debut of My 600 lbs Life on TLC. But there are a lot of things here, like Edison keeping track of calories on notepads all over the kitchen, because the characters still hadn't caught on to the smart phones and diet apps that everyone had already been using for years.
Now, mocking and judgment of the morbidly obese has been a theme in her other books that I've read, The Mandibles and We Need to Talk About Keven (which is one of my top 3 all-time favorite books), but Big Brother devotes nearly 400 pages to the subject. That's all it's really about. The protagonist, Pandora, plays mediator between her fat slob brother (Edison) and her thin superior husband (Fletcher) for two months before learning that Edison has nowhere to go and never really planned to leave. She makes the enormous sacrifice of leaving her husband and his two children, whom she long ago adopted, to dedicate a year of her life to helping Edison to lose over 200 pounds. He does, she goes home, he leaps spitefully off the wagon into an enormous chocolate cake, possibly because he was in love with her and hoped to destroy her marriage--it's never really clear, regains all the weight, and--
Did you watch Roseanne in the late 1980s and 1990s? Remember how in the last episode it's revealed that the entire last season was Roseanne's imagination, that her husband had actually died over a year ago, and by the way she re-wrote huge amounts of her life before that, like giving her daughters different husbands, and making her mom gay when it was really her sister who was a lesbian? Yeah, it's kinda like that. I won't spoil all the details, but it's already a work of fiction that focuses on only one thing--there's this guy and he's really, really, super fat--and after you slog through it in the hope of some reasonable resolution, she goes "PSYCHE, the whole second half was a lie! Here's what some guy told Pandora happened."
At one point during the part that never happened, it strays into some potentially interesting territory on eating disorders and the insane thinking they inspire, but it's too brief and too easily solved. The author comes off as a privileged thin person who's never fought the battle herself, and when it's revealed that the protagonist didn't, either, it feels doubly insulting.
Now, mocking and judgment of the morbidly obese has been a theme in her other books that I've read, The Mandibles and We Need to Talk About Keven (which is one of my top 3 all-time favorite books), but Big Brother devotes nearly 400 pages to the subject. That's all it's really about. The protagonist, Pandora, plays mediator between her fat slob brother (Edison) and her thin superior husband (Fletcher) for two months before learning that Edison has nowhere to go and never really planned to leave. She makes the enormous sacrifice of leaving her husband and his two children, whom she long ago adopted, to dedicate a year of her life to helping Edison to lose over 200 pounds. He does, she goes home, he leaps spitefully off the wagon into an enormous chocolate cake, possibly because he was in love with her and hoped to destroy her marriage--it's never really clear, regains all the weight, and--
Did you watch Roseanne in the late 1980s and 1990s? Remember how in the last episode it's revealed that the entire last season was Roseanne's imagination, that her husband had actually died over a year ago, and by the way she re-wrote huge amounts of her life before that, like giving her daughters different husbands, and making her mom gay when it was really her sister who was a lesbian? Yeah, it's kinda like that. I won't spoil all the details, but it's already a work of fiction that focuses on only one thing--there's this guy and he's really, really, super fat--and after you slog through it in the hope of some reasonable resolution, she goes "PSYCHE, the whole second half was a lie! Here's what some guy told Pandora happened."
At one point during the part that never happened, it strays into some potentially interesting territory on eating disorders and the insane thinking they inspire, but it's too brief and too easily solved. The author comes off as a privileged thin person who's never fought the battle herself, and when it's revealed that the protagonist didn't, either, it feels doubly insulting.
I really don't know how I feel about Lionel Shriver. She writes very very well, she can handle tricky subjects deftly, but something about her just rubs me the wrong way. I guess I like her as a writer but always feel like I would dislike her in real life. I had actually decided not to read her anymore but this book is about Weighty Matters and that's hard for me to resist. There are three main characters in this book: Pandora, early 40s, a little heavier than she'd like to be, but reasonably healthy. Her husband Fletcher, who recently has embraced fitness to an extreme and is kind of insufferably healthy. And Pandora's brother, Edison, who has recently gained a ton of weight and is twice the size he used to be. So I was interested in this because, weirdly enough, I could relate to all three of them. (I have an unusual history in this area.) Overall, I was disappointed, I think mainly because her characters are just so hard to like. I could sympathize with them, but, man, I really wanted to care about them, and I just didn't. I also feel like the author is too close to the subject matter, and probably should have written a memoir instead. Part three especially feels like she is talking, not the narrator. I don't know, held my interest and could be a decent book club pick, but I doubt I will read anything of hers again.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Big Brother. The characters were well developed, interesting, caricature-like, easy to connect with. The story is an exercise in wishful thinking, which is a lot of what weight loss, body image, family relationships is about. The juxtaposition of the Monotonous Dolls with their "tell it like it is" conversation and the family "elephant in the room" dialogue is very apt.
Weight loss, dietary regimes, and rebound weight gain were well researched and represented. There was no false hope in this book which I liked.
Weight loss, dietary regimes, and rebound weight gain were well researched and represented. There was no false hope in this book which I liked.
I confess that I gave up on this book about 90% of the way through. The premise just spiraled too far from plausibility for my taste - a woman moves in with her obese brother to help him lose weight and essentially cuts off all contact with her husband. Yes, family is important, but so is the family that you chose - i.e, your spouse. Edison's main attraction as a weight loss project for Pandora is that filial tie. Otherwise, he is pretty much a lazy, self-centered lout. So I couldn't listen any more.