This is a review of Cathy Lamb's Such a Pretty Face. It was a book club selection, but alas the meeting has come and gone already in my non-blogginess.
The book is about a woman who is trying to come in to her own after getting gastric bypass surgery. She has to deal with weighing 325 lbs. and then dropping about 165 lbs. of it. It basically describes her battle with insecurity and overcoming that insecurity. Oh yeah, did I mention that when she was a child her mother was schizophrenic and threw her, her little sister & herself over a bridge, leaving Stevie (our main character) as the only survivor? That's just a little added bonus for you.
I liked this book. At times I became very annoyed with Stevie's insecurities, which may sound somewhat ignorant or bitchy, but I was. As she got more confident I found that I liked her much better than in the earlier parts of the book. This book is very good for character development.
There are a lot of strange characters throughout it and Lamb does a fine job at giving you a good picture of who each of the characters really are. Stevie is really the most normal of all of the characters. Between the seriousness of some characters (a verbally abusive demeaning adoptive uncle, an equally abusive ex-husband, a bitchy lawyer/co-worker, an anorexic cousin) and the absolute comedy of some of the others [the hyper-sensitive super athlete cousin who sells blow-up dolls, Stevie's mother - the schizophrenic (also very sad, but rather humorous throughout the story), the co-worker who was a roller derby queen], this book had a nice even tone for what was really happening in the story. In all seriousness, the book was really tragedy, but the comedic efforts made for it to give you the lightness you needed so that you didn't need to put the book down and take a break every 5 seconds in order to protect yourself from slitting your wrists out of grief. (Maybe that was a bit of an extreme example...)
Anyway, this book is RECOMMENDED. You just need to get past some of Stevie's whiny insecurities. :)
First line teaser: "I know when it started."
Next Up: Portia de Rossi's Unbearable Lightness (Book club selection)
Going on my to-read list!