Are You EVER Going to be Thin? (and other stories)

Are You EVER Going to be Thin? (and other stories)

Author: Jennifer Semple Siegel

Paperback: 249 pages

Publisher: Infinity Publishing (July 2004)

Language: English

ISBN: 0741420929

REVIEW (5 STARS)

"Disturbing and delightful"

Linda Moran

(Author of How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever and owner of the Diet Survivor's non-dieting Yahoo! Group) 

BILLED AS FICTION, this anthology of short stories could not have been made up. The vivid word pictures of neglect, sexual abuse, harsh criticism, emotional torture over her weight, spiritual abuse by the Catholic Church, and more, all are painted with such detail that they could only have come from the heart of the author, Jennifer Semple Siegel.

Any alteration of the details is unknown to the reader, and is only the price of admission to a conspiracy we call the "fictional account," starring "Samantha," the one who is battered about in these stories.

Siegel is stoic and curiously detached from Samantha's life of struggle and strain. She tells Samantha's story as though she were a journalist. This author is only the reporter of the terrible facts.

And that she does well. Siegel delights in the highly descriptive re-telling of her accounts as only a writer can. These anecdotes, even the most sinister of them, are transformed into lovely pieces of writing at the author's hand.

The facts speak for themselves--maybe better. No emotion is necessary. By neither condemning nor condoning anything that happened, the raw details come across most clearly. The author, in this way, manages to do what is not easily done--she normalizes the events as part and parcel of the human condition while never stating it has to be this way.

It is in Siegel's dispassionate account, somewhat ironically, that Samantha touches readers' hearts, especially those who have endured chronic shame.

The stories vary in intensity and evil. Some are a light touch infused with humor. Although I personally like the lighter stories best, I make an exception for what may be my favorite story in this anthology. In this disturbing account of abuse at the hands of a day care worker, the author crafts words of sights and sound and thought that portray in living color an awful beauty.

Samantha's stories are only a reflection of what was and what now is as an adult. The author neither draws grand conclusions nor moralizes; if there's a theme, it's about the generations, the struggles of families, and that life is oh so messy.

I recommend this book for anyone who's had a difficult start in life, was unprotected as a child, or has been abused, or anyone with an interest in mental and emotional health. You'll laugh and cry with Samantha, and, by conspiratorial wink, with Siegel herself. The redemption in this book is in the beauty of the written word itself.

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BOOK DESCRIPTION

SAMANTHA ANNE MALLORY, an artist and psychology professor, struggles with weight, abuse, love, marriage, sexuality, the Catholic church, traumatic cultural events, family, passage of time, and death.

A 1990 family reunion awakens the nagging voices of Samantha's relatives, dead and alive. The title story interweaves fat-obsessed letters from an aunt with a grandmother's dire warnings of illicit preteen sexuality.

"Time, An Other," the opening story, describes Samantha's first memory; other stories move backward and forward and forward in time. "The Mission" looks back at Samantha's hippie days in Los Angeles, when, on New Year's Eve 1968, she nearly jumps out of a second-story window to escape a hotel fire that turns out to be only a tear gas attack by the L.A.P.D. "In the Name of God" introduces Samantha to 9/11 New York and her feisty granddaughter Kaitlyn. "Psychedelic Bingo" moves forward to 2035, where teenagers are wired--literally--and Samantha is an elderly woman who wages a generational war with her aging daughter Nicole. "Hurry Up, Please, It's Time" depicts Samantha's increasing obsession with death and dying.

Throughout this collection of 24 stories, this spirited middle-aged overweight woman seeks significant meaning in her life as she faces 40 and beyond.

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("Time, An Other," the opening story from the collection, appears on the next four modules)