Fat Girl

A Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2005 (Entertainment Weekly)

For any woman who has ever had a love/hate relationship with food and with how she looks; for anyone who has knowingly or unconsciously used food to try to fill the hole in his heart or soothe the craggy edges of his psyche, Fat Girl is a brilliantly rendered, angst-filled coming-of-age story of gain and loss. From the lush descriptions of food that call to mind the writings of M.F.K. Fisher at her finest, to the heartbreaking accounts of Moore’s deep longing for family and a sense of belonging and love, Fat Girl stuns and shocks, saddens and tickles.

“Searingly honest without affectation… Moore emerged from her hellish upbringing as a kind of softer Diane Arbus, wielding pen instead of camera.”—The Seattle Times
 
“Frank, often funny—intelligent and entertaining.”—People (starred review)
 
“God, I love this book. It is wise, funny, painful, revealing, and profoundly honest.”—Anne Lamott
 
“Judith Moore grabs the reader by the collar, and shakes up our notion of life in the fat lane.”—David Sedaris
 
“Stark… lyrical, and often funny, Judith Moore ambushes you on the very first page, and in short order has lifted you up and broken your heart.”—Newsweek
 
“A slap-in-the-face of a book—courageous, heartbreaking, fascinating, and darkly funny.”—Augusten Burroughs