According to Amazon.com, one of the statistically improbable phrases occurring in this novel about high school girls is "dick sucked."  This information gives some sense of the readiness of author Michelle Embree to address issues that most other books about high school avoid, such as sex, homosexuality, drugs, and truancy.  Yet Embree's novel is not pornographic or even particularly sexual: she sets out sixteen-year-old Angie's perspective with energetic prose and dialog, and she gives Angie an authentic voice.  Manstealing for Fat Girls starts out very well, giving us a vivid cast of characters and plenty of events to keep the story interesting.  However, by about half way through, the book starts to flag, and it becomes clear that the story does not have anywhere to go. 

Living with her mother in a working class suburb of St. Louis, Angie is going through problems both at home and at school.  Her mother has a new boyfriend Rudy who soon moves in with them, and it does not go so smoothly, because she and Rudy do not get on well.  He does not respect her privacy and expects her to obey him as head of the household, but she does not have any intention of doing so.  Angie is overweight, and is struggling with a diet; part of the struggle is her own craving for lots of food, but she also has to contend with her mother's fat-laden cooking. 

Angie's social life is complicated.  Her best friend Shelby is a lesbian, and keeping the friendship along with her weight has meant that Angie gets called "Lessylard" at school.  She takes this, along with most of her other trials, stoically.  Yet Angie is far from doing well at school, since she copes with the pressures by skipping and calling in medical excuses pretending to be her mother.  She is interested in getting a boyfriend, but she isn't sure if she is gay or straight.  She spends most of her time hanging out with friends watching them do crazy stuff, and occasionally getting into trouble herself.  The main drama of the story happens when Angie stands up to the vile but popular Mindy Overton, and thus risks retribution from Mindy and her cohort.  What will Angie do, and will she survive the beating she is likely to get.  We get a distinctive and often funny portrait of a side of adolescence rarely portrayed in novels, but the plot is just not interesting enough to sustain the reader's interest. 

Link: Publisher web page for book

© 2007 Christian Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction