Published in 2019
224 pages
Mona Awad was born in Montreal and has lived in the US on and off since 2003. A graduate of York University in Toronto, she received her MFA in fiction from Brown University and her MScR in English literature from the University of Edinburgh, where she wrote her dissertation on fear and the fairy tale, graduating with distinction. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, the Walrus, Joyland, Post Road, St. Petersburg Review, and elsewhere. She has worked as an instructor in the Literary Arts department at Brown University and as a bookseller for various independent bookstores including Pages in Toronto, the King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City and Blackwell Books in Edinburgh. She has also worked as a freelance journalist and a food columnist for the Montreal-based magazine Maisonneuve; her essay The Shrinking Woman, which appeared in that magazine, was a finalist for a Canadian National Magazine Award.
What is this book about?
‘A beautiful, necessary book’ –Roxane Gay
‘Echoes of Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman‘ –IRISH TIMES
Lizzie doesn’t like the way she looks. Though she dates guys online, she’s afraid to send pictures: no-one wants a fat girl.
So Lizzie starts to lose weight. With punishing drive she counts almonds consumed and pounds dropped, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband and her own reflection in the mirror. But no matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?
In this darkly funny, deeply resonant novel, Mona Awad delivers a tender and moving depiction of a lovably difficult young woman whose life is hijacked by her struggle to conform.
