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A review by maedo
Eat Only When You're Hungry by Lindsay Hunter
5.0
Oh, how I loved this book.
Eat Only When You're Hungry, as you may have guessed from the title, is about coming to terms with compulsions. The characters and the temptations to overindulgence that they face - food, alcohol, drugs, sex - are so universal that this could be the story of you or your neighbors (or you AND your neighbors, as it were).
Yet this book also feels original in terms of fiction writing, because Hunter has resisted all authorly temptations to overdramatize inherent human dramas. There's no outlandish plot point to pull you out of the story in this one. Everything that happens makes sense from what has come before.
My favorite thing about this book is, I think, the main character, Greg. Morbidly obese characters aren't too common in fiction - unless you count female characters bemoaning their size 10-12 as morbidly obese, which I don't. It's really easy to get a fat character wrong, in terms of psychology and behavior (like we're all clowning it up and eating entire trays of cookies in one sitting to hide the sad 24/7), but Hunter gets this one so right. As Greg struggles to lift himself off the floor from a laying/sitting position, or to feel comfortable living in an RV, showering with one leg out of the bath, none of it feels comic or cartoonish. These moments are full of the proper pathos of a man who feels like he is bumbling in a big body that's gotten out of his control; a body he has earned by existing comfortably, but not mindfully. When he trips and cuts his knee on asphalt, or shocks his ankles jumping out of bed, it's not funny. His discomfort has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I loved the way Hunter handles Greg's physical being in this book. I hope more authors write fat characters with such insight.
While this book is plot driven by Greg's road trip to find his drug-addicted son in Florida, employing his ex-wife and his father in the search, it is really about Greg unearthing all of the feelings that have led him to his current catatonia along the way. He examines those relationships with his son and his ex-wife and his parents, but also with his current wife, who becomes a metaphor of sorts. As the icing on the cake (at least for me), he has these moments of self discovery amid seedy truck stops and swampy, colorful Florida landscape.
I expected to like Eat Only When You're Hungry based on its synopsis. I did not expect to love it, but here we are: five stars!
Eat Only When You're Hungry, as you may have guessed from the title, is about coming to terms with compulsions. The characters and the temptations to overindulgence that they face - food, alcohol, drugs, sex - are so universal that this could be the story of you or your neighbors (or you AND your neighbors, as it were).
Yet this book also feels original in terms of fiction writing, because Hunter has resisted all authorly temptations to overdramatize inherent human dramas. There's no outlandish plot point to pull you out of the story in this one. Everything that happens makes sense from what has come before.
My favorite thing about this book is, I think, the main character, Greg. Morbidly obese characters aren't too common in fiction - unless you count female characters bemoaning their size 10-12 as morbidly obese, which I don't. It's really easy to get a fat character wrong, in terms of psychology and behavior (like we're all clowning it up and eating entire trays of cookies in one sitting to hide the sad 24/7), but Hunter gets this one so right. As Greg struggles to lift himself off the floor from a laying/sitting position, or to feel comfortable living in an RV, showering with one leg out of the bath, none of it feels comic or cartoonish. These moments are full of the proper pathos of a man who feels like he is bumbling in a big body that's gotten out of his control; a body he has earned by existing comfortably, but not mindfully. When he trips and cuts his knee on asphalt, or shocks his ankles jumping out of bed, it's not funny. His discomfort has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I loved the way Hunter handles Greg's physical being in this book. I hope more authors write fat characters with such insight.
While this book is plot driven by Greg's road trip to find his drug-addicted son in Florida, employing his ex-wife and his father in the search, it is really about Greg unearthing all of the feelings that have led him to his current catatonia along the way. He examines those relationships with his son and his ex-wife and his parents, but also with his current wife, who becomes a metaphor of sorts. As the icing on the cake (at least for me), he has these moments of self discovery amid seedy truck stops and swampy, colorful Florida landscape.
I expected to like Eat Only When You're Hungry based on its synopsis. I did not expect to love it, but here we are: five stars!