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deeclancy 's review for:
Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party
by Alexander McCall Smith
The numerous Goodreads reviewers who say this is a fat-shaming book have not read it properly. The characters who engage in fat-shaming in the book are portrayed as deeply flawed individuals, of highly dubious character. Fatty O'Leary, on the other hand, is a likeable, hardworking, kind character who adores his wife and has little time for snobs. I wonder why people bother reviewing books they haven't read properly? Or perhaps this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles of storytelling: depicting something is not the same as advocating it. If it were, then all murder mystery writers are potentially hard-core criminals. It's baffling to me that anyone who professes to be a reader could misunderstand the principles of Fiction 123 so fundamentally.
This is a whimsical piece of comic fiction about an Irish-American couple, Fatty and Betty O'Leary, who hail from Fayetteville, Arkansas. They decide to take a trip to Ireland for Fatty's 40th birthday. Unfortunately for Fatty, the trip consists of a series of humiliations related to his weight problems, instead of the Irish welcome he had been led to expect.
In years gone by, I have greatly enjoyed the 44 Scotland Street series, and also the Sunday Philosophy Club series. The story of Fatty O'Leary has a bit more of a slapstick element than either of those series of novels, but as with much comic fiction, there is quite a lot of social satire too. This includes the character of Rupert O'Brien, an insufferable name-dropper staying at the same hotel as Fatty, who is a literary critic for The Irish Times. I listened to the audio book of this, and McCall Smith is to be congratulated on nailing the accent of an Irish intellectual snob to a tee.
It's clear from the 44 Scotland Street series that McCall Smith has no time for the liberal media and would regard certain media outlets as engaging in a type of political correctness that acts as a mask for a certain spitefulness and hypocrisy. Rupert O'Brien epitomises this in his unkind behaviour toward Fatty and Betty. It's unclear to me that the media outlets in question are as bad as McCall Smith suggests, however.
I am sceptical of language policing and political correctness at its most extreme and silly. I have noticed on social media and in corporate settings that it quite often acts as a mask for deep ethical flaws. It may make you look good to police people's language and use the right terminology, but looking good is not the same as being good at your essence (individually or institutionally). Genuinely decent people generally don't feel the need to virtue signal quite so desperately. However, it's not clear to me at all that the The Guardian or The Irish Times encourage or emobdy any of this (at least, not as policy), as McCall Smith seems to think. One can only speculate that he has had some adverse personal experiences of individual writers from those outlets.
There are also some salient points about body-shaming and general hypocrisies associated with said political correctness and the helping professions, and by the end of the book, we are rooting for Fatty in his quest to be accepted for himself.
This is an enjoyable book if you like comic fiction of this particular style, done reasonably well. There was a time when Fatty and Betty were the typical types of American tourists as Irish saw them, though not so much these days, when both American tourists and Ireland have become more sophisticated and diverse. Maybe such tourists in the past also regarded us Irish as complete shysters with no genetic diversity (a good number of characters Fatty encounters in their Tipperary adventures are called Delaney).
McCall Smith took up fiction writing on retiring from his academic career in medical ethics, and seems to be astonishingly prolific. I have yet to tackle dozens of his novels, but at least I have guaranteed further reading enjoyment for future years. Certainly, this wouldn't be my favourite of his novels, but it does have some genuinely funny moments.
This is a whimsical piece of comic fiction about an Irish-American couple, Fatty and Betty O'Leary, who hail from Fayetteville, Arkansas. They decide to take a trip to Ireland for Fatty's 40th birthday. Unfortunately for Fatty, the trip consists of a series of humiliations related to his weight problems, instead of the Irish welcome he had been led to expect.
In years gone by, I have greatly enjoyed the 44 Scotland Street series, and also the Sunday Philosophy Club series. The story of Fatty O'Leary has a bit more of a slapstick element than either of those series of novels, but as with much comic fiction, there is quite a lot of social satire too. This includes the character of Rupert O'Brien, an insufferable name-dropper staying at the same hotel as Fatty, who is a literary critic for The Irish Times. I listened to the audio book of this, and McCall Smith is to be congratulated on nailing the accent of an Irish intellectual snob to a tee.
It's clear from the 44 Scotland Street series that McCall Smith has no time for the liberal media and would regard certain media outlets as engaging in a type of political correctness that acts as a mask for a certain spitefulness and hypocrisy. Rupert O'Brien epitomises this in his unkind behaviour toward Fatty and Betty. It's unclear to me that the media outlets in question are as bad as McCall Smith suggests, however.
I am sceptical of language policing and political correctness at its most extreme and silly. I have noticed on social media and in corporate settings that it quite often acts as a mask for deep ethical flaws. It may make you look good to police people's language and use the right terminology, but looking good is not the same as being good at your essence (individually or institutionally). Genuinely decent people generally don't feel the need to virtue signal quite so desperately. However, it's not clear to me at all that the The Guardian or The Irish Times encourage or emobdy any of this (at least, not as policy), as McCall Smith seems to think. One can only speculate that he has had some adverse personal experiences of individual writers from those outlets.
There are also some salient points about body-shaming and general hypocrisies associated with said political correctness and the helping professions, and by the end of the book, we are rooting for Fatty in his quest to be accepted for himself.
This is an enjoyable book if you like comic fiction of this particular style, done reasonably well. There was a time when Fatty and Betty were the typical types of American tourists as Irish saw them, though not so much these days, when both American tourists and Ireland have become more sophisticated and diverse. Maybe such tourists in the past also regarded us Irish as complete shysters with no genetic diversity (a good number of characters Fatty encounters in their Tipperary adventures are called Delaney).
McCall Smith took up fiction writing on retiring from his academic career in medical ethics, and seems to be astonishingly prolific. I have yet to tackle dozens of his novels, but at least I have guaranteed further reading enjoyment for future years. Certainly, this wouldn't be my favourite of his novels, but it does have some genuinely funny moments.