Review: Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught

Title: Big Fat Manifesto
Author: Susan Vaught
Published: December 2007
Source: The Library
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Jamie is a senior in high school and, like so many of her peers, doing too much. Unlike so many of her friends, she is enormously, irreversibly, sometimes angrily (and occasionally delightedly) overweight. Her most immediate need is a scholarship to college, so she writes an explosive and controversial column every week in the school paper about being fat. Soon, Jamie finds herself fighting for her rights as a very fat girl—and not quietly. As her column raises all kinds of public questions, so too must Jamie find her own private way in the world, with love popping up in an unexpected place, and satisfaction in her size losing ground to real frustration.

Tapping into her own experience with losing weight, her training as a psychotherapist, and the current fascination in the media with teens trying drastic weight-loss measures, Susan Vaught writes searing and hilarious prose that will grip readers while asking the most profound questions about life.

Going into this book I thought that I was going to love it. Sadly, I was wrong. I thought that it was going to be about a big girl not caring about her weight or what other people thought. But it wasn't, it was about a big girl pretending to not care. Instead of a feisty, sassy, funny girl who happens to be big I got a whiny, insecure, funny girl who's whole life is her weight. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the book, because I did. It just wasn't what I expected or craved. 


Characters: 7/10
Writing: 8/10
Plot: 8/10
Originality: 8/10
Ending: 8/10
Overall: 39/50 C+