A well rounded satire on modern society and its fads and perceptions. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Here the paving is done by nazis with a sense of humor.

Ok, I'll keep this short as there isn't that much to say about this book. Is it in the same league as Tom Sharpe novels? No way. Is it an enjoyable read for a few hours, giving the reader a chuckle of two? Yes. There you go. Don't expect to cry with laughter but it does for a long journey or stint on a plane. ( )

http://www.communityfriend.co.uk/revi... ( )

Only by a serious stretch of my imagination would I refer to this as SF and actually as SF it won't get the market it really should have. This is a near future social satire. Extrapolating from some recent comments on Fat and overweight issues this is a book that looks at some conclusions about these issues that follow. Instead of being decades or centuries away this is a story about the day after tomorrow.

This is the story of three characters, Grenville Roberts, a chef who has slipped into obese while he wasn't watching, a man having the worst day of his life. Jeremy Slank, a PR man, or as he prefers a Conceptuologist, who has got the job of promoting the Government's new Fat Farms and Hayleigh, a teenager obsessed with food and weight and determined to impress her pop star idol, some day. Along with these three there's Jemma Bartlet, a research assistant who is the scientific mouthpiece for the author and lust object for Jeremy.

It has hot topics, polemics about statistics, blog entries, an extract from Grenville's book on cooking (all about cooking eggs!) and it also has a rushed ending. Grenville and Hayleigh represent the poles of the fat divide and I'm not sure that they're not too much of the poles apart, but then again there wouldn't have been as much humour about some situations. Some of the humour though is more nervous humour, the kind of "there but for the grace etc." humour that gives you a slightly guilty aftertaste.

My favourite character was Grenville, I have some weight issues myself and it never fails to annoy me how some people assume it's easy to loose weight (it isn't), that I'm not trying (go away) that I don't exercise (sometimes I don't) and that I don't eat healthily (not all the time but few people do, I usually eat healthily and slowly but surely I'm increasing the healthy to unhealthy ratio). The book also discusses the abuse of statistics which is a pet topic of mine.

Overall? It's not a bad book but it's not a great book, readable but sometimes the author's message overwhelms the story. ( )

Grant takes a literary step forward with this biting satire on the nanny state and the media's obsession with body image. It's not a complete success, sometimes the prose is too preachy and one of the characters (a scientific researcher) seems to be in the book purely as a means of cramming in as much of the author's research as possible. Where Grant is more successful is in his portrayal of his leading chararcters; an overweight celebrity chef, a PR man and ,most impressively and touchingly, an anorexic teenage girl. Grant is occasionally opinionated but what's wrong with having an opinion! ( )