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    Fat Girl: A True Story
    Fat Girl: A True Story
    Fat Girl: A True Story
    Audiobook5 hours

    Fat Girl: A True Story

    Written by Judith Moore

    Narrated by Carol Monda

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "I am fat," begins Judith Moore's unflinching account of her life. As she describes her obsessions with food, struggles with self image and troubled relationships, she refuses to become an object of pity. Moore is the recipient of two NEA grants and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her previous book, also a memoir, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 6, 2010
    ISBN9781449832322
    Fat Girl: A True Story

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    Reviews for Fat Girl

    3.5/5

    184 ratings15 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A short but blunt memoir. The author states clearly at the beginning that this is no "Happy Ending" story. That she was fat and still is and no man came and swept her off her feet after she slimmed to a thin size. This book is raw and real and almost hard to read because of how [no matter your size] easy it is to relate to how she feels about her body.

      This book is as real as it gets with body talk. Her descriptions of living encased in a fat body are sharp, poignant, sad and familiar. Her descriptions of food will make your mouth water, your stomach growl and your heart ache.

      It's an easy, quick and rewarding read.

      Favorite Quotes:

      1) "Even when I was slender, I was fat". Oh by, does that one resonate painfully true.
    • 2/5
      Darkly funny, but incredibly sad.
    • 5/5
      This is a sad, sad autobiography. It is the story of a girl nobody loved, who grew up without the security of knowing that unconditional love could be found somewhere- not from parents, grandparents, or siblings. Moore grew up in an angry, loveless family. Whether implicit or explicit, Moore is reminded at every turn that as the fat girl she deserves all of the misery, hatred, and approbation that comes her way. This is a literary memoir, and one that is bleak and uncompromising. One can't help but hope that at some point Judith the child will get the love and affection that she needs. Alas, that point never comes. Don't expect to be uplifted by this book, but do expect to be affected.
    • 4/5
      Slow start but worth the effort to stick with it.
    • 5/5
      ** spoiler alert ** I almost stopped reading this book because it was so sad. I thought it would be disrespectful if I didn't finish because it was a true story and the author poured her heart into this book. It's says somewhere that it is “A non-fiction version of She's Come Undone." I kind of liked She's Come Undone but I liked this one much better. A terrible childhood, filled with everything possible that could go wrong. Moore didn't obsess with food. She did enjoy food very much. She just simply w ...more I almost stopped reading this book because it was so sad. I thought it would be disrespectful if I didn't finish because it was a true story and the author poured her heart into this book. It's says somewhere that it is “A non-fiction version of She's come undone." I kind of liked She's come undone but I liked this one much better. A terrible childhood, filled with everything possible that could go wrong. Moore didn't obsess with food. She did enjoy food very much. She just simply was fat and couldn't change that. No matter how hard she tried to loose the weight, it never completely went away. She would then gain it all back. I really admire and praise Moore for opening up and sharing her story which no doubt, was very difficult to do. She had even said that writing the novel opened up past memories that were hurtful and was something she wished she didn't have to do. If you are chunky/fat/over-weight this book may hit home with you. It may touch you more than it would a skinny person. I guess because we've been there and we can relate to Moore's experiences. In the end, I was speechless. I was just so sad that her life had laid out that way. So unfortunate. I just hope things get better for her in the future. I hope she does find that one "fat man" as she describes and he makes her SO HAPPY she will forget her past. I hope he mends her wounds and loves her dearly. I'm going to pass this book on to a friend, perhaps with a box of tissues.
    • 4/5
      Though this book is not generally uplifting, there is a passage from it that struck me because it was so life-affirming. About her parents' decision to get married, the author-narrator says: "I want to tell them, 'Stop, don't do it.' You are going to be miserable and you are going to make everyone who knows you miserable. But I want to be born."This is a memoir that starts with a bit of the author's narrator, goes on to describe her parents' lives up until she was born and then focuses on her own childhood as a 'fat girl.' Being a fat girl, this author makes abundantly clear (and in this, I unreservedly concur), is not fun. I could relate to some of her experience personally, while other components of her fat girl experience made me think it was more like my own mother's childhood (which coincided in time with the author's), which she has told me about.Another striking quote for me: (about her dislike of eating her own cooking) "I want to eat other people's food. Eating what I cook is the same as talking to myself."Warning: Do no read while hungry.
    • 4/5
      This is a memoir of the author's childhood. It was not a pleasant one. As the title suggests, she was an overweight child and has been overweight most of her life. She doesn't play psychologist and analyze her childhood for emotional reasons for her weight gain; she simply tells us the facts. She allows us to see her much as she must have appeared to anyone who met her. Yet she is so honest about her thoughts that I really felt I was inside her mind.This is a difficult book to read. It's very gripping, but she is very raw and open about the awful things she did and the horrid things that were done to her. I felt pity, kinship, repulsion, shock and horror all at the same time.Bottom line: writing is well done; sad subject matter
    • 1/5
      People often say that 'honesty is the best policy' and similar things. It is indeed interesting to read certain reviews of this book- most of the positive ones emphasize Judith Moore's 'brutal honesty' and 'unflinching candour'. But for me reading this book felt a bit like voyerism. I felt I was manipulated into pitying Moore, led by Moore's own exhibitionism. However many times she repeats that she 'doesn't want to be pitied', still, the reader is led exactly into pity for Moore and anger for those who abused her.The feeling I had, while reading 'Fat girl', was that Moore in practice subscribes to the view that the worse and grossest something sounds- and the more personal-, the more honest you're going to be judged to be: and this, in our society, is seen as a virtue. Lay it all out for all to see: this is not only good for you, but good for others. Well, I beg to disagree. I think it is sometimes the case that people need to start containing their problems and working them through, not spilling them out like this.I agree with the readers who see Judith Moore as anti-fat & similar to racist / sexist in her descriptions of women's body smells. On the other hand, I don't think she necessarily had to be objective or anything like that- she's only describing her own experience, and she has the right to do that.I, as a reader, also though have the right not to like this intensely personal description, which serves as nothing more than catharsis for the author. I don't appreciate honesty for its sake: there has to be a point to it. I don't mean a happy-ending, redemption kind of point. I just mean something more than narcissistic self-pity & exhibitionism masked as brutal honesty.Judith Moore is on the other hand a talented writer & has a way to describe some very difficult and complex experiences in a straightforward, clear way. For example, the first part of the book which describes her adult experiences of fatness were at points compelling- they just made me think how good her writing could have been if it was chanelled on something other than a self-hating, fat-hating, predictable in its 'it's all about abuse' and 'spill it out for all to see' emphasis book.All in all, not recommended.
    • 3/5
      A biting memoir that pulls no punches about how it feels to be overweight.
    • 2/5
      Can't remember when I read this one... I DO remember that it was NOT uplifting in the least. Basically a biography of a very sad & depressed person... no happy ending here!
    • 4/5
      No punches pulled: Moore's self-assessment is brutally forthright. She remarks that "Narrators of first-person claptrap like this often greet the reader at the door with moist hugs and complaisant kisses. I won't. I will not endear myself. I won't put on airs. I am not that pleasant. The older I get the less pleasant I am. I mistrust real-life stories that conclude on a triumphant note.... This is a story about an unhappy fat girl who became a fat woman who was happy and unhappy."
    • 2/5
      This book is a quick, sometimes disturbing, sometimes entertaining read. Although it didn't seem like anything special to me. A fat woman whining about being a fat girl. But the book did provide insight into the psychology behind her actions and the shocking family life that she had to endure, so it did have that going for it.
    • 4/5
      This was a shockingly honest memoir. Maybe too honest!
    • 5/5
      ***** = A Lifetime KeeperI imagine that people who consider themselves radical fat activists won't like this book; it's not exactly about loving your fat self. It is, though, an honest and revealing account of an unhappy childhood filled with feelings of guilt, shame, self-loathing and a need for love. I found it depressing, moving, and beautiful in its naked truthfulness.
    • 2/5
      Yeah, despite the author's fixation on fatness, this book seems to be more about how the author came to hate herself. It's a catalog of injuries told from a very dark place, from there nothing is good and every old hurt is magnified. Not that she didn't have a bad childhood, but plenty have had that, some much worse than her. The absence of any kind of perspective, distance, growth makes it not really a story, not really a book, more of a bad blog. There is also an arrogance to the book, like she is unique because of her pain, not in spite of it. There is also no indication of her ever considering others except as they relate to her (excusable for a child certainly but not for the adult). Should make interesting book club discussion though!