I was a tiny child, small and thin. Pregnancy at the age of nineteen changed the âthinâ for goodâI never got any taller, but I did gradually get bigger. At several inches under five feet tall, I donât have a lot of wiggle room on the BMI scale, and Iâve spent most of the last twenty years or so entrenched in the âoverweightâ bracket, occasionally tipping over into âobeseâ. I worked at achieving Lifetime Member status in Weight Watchers, and then watched the weight return. Iâve adjusted and readjusted eating habits. Iâve been prescribed medications to manage my blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. But if I were carrying the same number of pounds dispersed over just six more inches of height (which would make me 5â2â), my weight would probably cause me very little trouble at all.
With all that as preamble, I doubt I would have read Sarai Walkerâs Dietland if it werenât for the bloggers. Iâd already pre-judged it much as Leah did before she cracked it open:
âBased on the cover and title of Dietland, I was expecting something fluffy and shallow. I mean, an overweight woman working for a NYC magazine? How many times has that been done in chick lit?â
But Jeanne whetted my interest by revealing just how much this was not a book to be judged by its cover:
âHow could I resist a satiric novel about dieting titled Dietland and featuring a picture of a hand-grenade cupcake with sprinkles and a cherry on its cover? This new novel by Sarai Walker is delightful reading for anyone who has ever tried a reducing diet, and practically required for anyone who, like me, has tried lots of them including one with terrible-tasting pre-packaged food like the âBaptist dietâ in the novel.â
And then April featured it in a âFabulous Feminist Fridayâ review:
âDietland takes on all the issues. Gender inequality, fat shaming being one of the last acceptable prejudices, beauty culture. The writing is good, there are some characters that seem a little underdeveloped, but I almost wonder if this was intentional â if these characters are less characters and more caricatures. For me that worked with the satire and social commentary that Walker was creating.â
And in one of those odd coincidences of life and art, I was in the middle of reading the audiobook when I got together with a long-time friend who recently had the weight-loss surgery that Dietlandâs protagonist, Alicia âPlumâ Kettle, is preparing for when the novel opens.
At thirty years old, Plum has been obese since childhood and is a veteran of nearly every weight-loss plan in existence. Convinced thereâs a thin woman trying to get out of the body she refuses to describe as âfat,â sheâs sure that weight-loss surgery is the only way to make that happen; sheâs biding her time and saving her money until her âreal,â thin-person life can start. And if this were all there was to Dietland, I could have stopped at my pre-judging.
As Plumâs ideas about who she is, and who sheâs meant to be, are challenged by the members of a feminist collective, the country is riveted by a series of attacks on men linked to various sex-related offenses. Itâs not a spoiler to note that these threads will come together eventually, as the activities of the activist (terrorist?) known only as âJenniferâ serve as reaction to and commentary on the objectification, subjugation, and depersonalization of modern women, while Plumâs personal experiences embody them.
That summary makes Dietland sound pretty seriousâŠand it is. And yet it isnât. It has serious points to make, but Sarai Walker makes them with intelligence and humor; the humor occasionally goes a bit over the top, but thatâs not out of step with the novelâs satirical nature. Provocative and sometimes discomforting, particularly in its depictions of pornography, Dietland didnât exactly defy my expectationsâmy blogger friends had given me a very good idea of what expectations to haveâbut it was a deeper, more satisfying read than its cover alone would have led me to expect.
Dietland
Sarai Walker (Twitter) (Facebook)
Audiobook read by Tara Sands
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 2015), Hardcover (ISBN 054437343X / 9780544373433)
Fiction, 320 pages
Source:Â Purchased audiobook (Highbridge Audio, May 2015; ISBN 9781622316137)
Book description, from the publisherâs website
Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when youâre fat, to be noticed is to be judged. Or mocked. Or worse. With her job answering fan mail for a popular teen girlsâ magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. Only then can her true life as a thin person finally begin.
But when Plum notices sheâs being followed by a mysterious woman in colorful tights and combat boots, she finds herself falling down a rabbit hole into the world of Calliope House, a community of women who live life on their own terms. Reluctant but intrigued, Plum agrees to a series of challenges that force her to deal with the real costs of becoming âbeautiful.â At the same time, a dangerous guerilla group begins to terrorize a world that mistreats women, and as Plum grapples with her own personal struggles, she becomes entangled in a sinister plot. The consequences are explosive.
Part coming-of-age story, part revenge fantasy, Dietland, is a bold, original, and funny debut novel that takes on the beauty industry, gender inequality, and our weight loss obsessionâfrom the inside out, and with fists flying.
Opening lines:
“It was late in the spring when I noticed that a girl was following me, nearly the end of May, a month that means perhaps or might be. She crept into the edges of my consciousness like something blurry coming into focus. She was an odd girl, tramping around in black boots with the laces undone, her legs covered in bright fruit-hued tights, like the colors in a roll of Life Savers. I didnât know why she was following me. People stared at me wherever I went, but this was different. To the girl I was not an object of ridicule but a creature of interest. She would observe me and then write things in her red spiral-bound notebook.
“The first time I noticed the girl in a conscious way was at the cafĂ©. On most days I did my work there, sitting at a table in the back with my laptop, answering messages from teenage girls. Dear Kitty, I have stretch marks on my boobs, please help. There was never any end to the messages and I usually sat at my table for hours, sipping cups of coffee and peppermint tea as I gave out the advice I wasnât qualified to give. For three years the cafĂ© had been my world. I couldnât face working at home, trapped in my apartment all day with nothing to distract me from the drumbeat of Dear Kitty,Dear Kitty, please help me.
âOne afternoon I looked up from a message I was typing and saw the girl sitting at a table nearby, restlessly tapping her lime green leg, her canvas bag slouched in the chair across from her. I realized that Iâd seen her before. Sheâd been sitting on the stoop of my building that morning. She had long dark hair and I remembered how she turned to look at me. Our eyes met and it was this look that I would remember in the weeks and months to come, when her face was in the newspapers and on TV â the glance over the shoulder, the eyes peeking out from the thick black liner that framed them.â