Review: The Curse of the Holy Pail

(I wrote this review out on paper yesterday because I didn’t have computer access, so you get two posts in a row today. Aren’t you lucky?)

I read Too Big to Miss a few weeks ago and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped. The writing was mediocre at best, and my excitement at finally discovering a book with a fat female lead was overshadowed by the fact that the way Jaffarian handled the fat acceptance/self acceptance themes didn’t add to the story but distracted from it. I hate novels that preach at me, even if I agree with what’s being preached. But I did find the storyline and characters enjoyable and figured any kniks in the writing style, as well as further development of the characters, might be worked out later; the first book in a series, in my experience, is usually one of the worst. So I kept reading to see how it turned out, and I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed The Curse of the Holy Pail a lot more.

The writing is, to be frank, still subpar. Lots of “telling, not showing,” awkward infodumping, and ending chapters or changing the course of a conversation in what seems to be the middle of a thought. I can tell that Jaffarian is going for an informal, down-to-earth style of narration, and when it works it’s lovely, but I often found it distracting.

But The Curse of the Holy Pail succeeded where Too Big to Miss did not in presenting an array of different body types without sounding preachy or unrealistic. The characters are fleshed out more, and some interesting things are set up for future character development. Even Steele, the recurring “villain,” is developed into a multi-dimensional character with complex motives–something I wish had been extended to Odelia’s charicature of a fatphobic family.

The mystery itself is over-the-top and slightly silly–it reminds me of Remington Steele, in a very good way–but it is not so exaggerated as to be unbelievable. The plotting is excellent, and the twists at the end are unpredictable and at the same time make perfect sense. The romance subplot was both sweet and heartbreaking, and I won’t lie that that’s a good part of the reason I want to continue reading the series.

Altogether it’s a fun and lighthearted read, immensely enjoyable despite its flaws.

xposted

Review: The Gospel of Food

A while ago I read Barry Glassner’s book The Culture of Fear, which I found generally well-argued but somewhat offputting in tone. The Gospel of Food was a much better book, I think; also well-argued, but the tone, I think, is more accessible to people who may not necessarily agree with the thesis. I think it would be a very good book for those new to fat acceptance or sympathetic to its ideas, because while Glassner expresses and provides evidence for many fat acceptance/Health At Every Size philosophies, he doesn’t market the book as being strictly about fat acceptance.

I folded down quite a few pages to mark studies I wanted to talk about. I usually hate messing up library books like that, but sometimes I can’t resist. Don’t tell anyone.

At the beginning of the first chapter, Glassner mentions a study showing that people absorb more iron when they eat food that they like–the point being that enjoyment of food has physiological as well as emotional benefits.

Other studies showed, predictably, that deprivation leads to binging:

In experiments at Penn State University, youngsters were fed large lunches and then offered junk food. Some ate a great deal of the junk food even though they were already full, while others ate almost none. What predicted how much junk food they consumed? Whether their parents forbid high-fat, high-sugar foods in their regular diet.

One of the tenets of intuitive eating, of course, is removing the labels of “good” and “bad” food and eating a balanced diet based on what your body craves. Deprivation due to “healthy eating,” dieting, or being unable to afford food (as Glassner mentions later in the book) leads to binging and unhealthy eating patterns.

And of course, with the stereotype of the McDonald’s-chugging fatty, everyone ignores the studies showing that people who eat fast food more frequently are actually thinner than those who don’t. This was on Junkfood Science recently, which linked this 2008 study; Glassner cites a study from way back in 2001 (Critser, p. 115; Simone A. French, M. Story, et al., “Fast Food Restaurant Use Among Adolescents,” International Journal of Obesity 25 (2001): 1823-33). No one ever hears about this, of course.

There are also chapters on issues such as food production, organic farming, and restaurant culture, which weren’t of as much interest to me; but as I said before, this isn’t a strictly fat acceptance book, which is part of what makes it so great. Definitely worth reading.