Life in the Fat Lane

I read this as an impressionable seventh or eighth grader, already saddled with a substantial amount of body dysphoria. I think about this book all the time, similar to Go Ask Alice; it's so irresponsible and exploitative and I can't believe it was still in schools 9 years after publication, and more, that people have read it in the last decade and think it has any value.

Lara's life is picture perfect: she is pretty, popular, talented, has a loving perfect boyfriend and a "perfect" family and most of all, she is thin. Then her life takes a 180 degree flip: she gets fat. She goes from 109 pounds to over 200 in a matter of months. It ruins her social life as well as disappointing her image-obsessed parents. At home, the family begins to crumble.

Lara learns a lot about physical beauty and its hold it has on adolescent young women. She no longer has (popular) friends, and, as a result, finds herself gravitating toward the "unpopular" kids, kids she never thought about or even shunned when she was thin and popular.

I think this book is important: it's not a shallow book even though it deals with topics such show more as beauty pageants, popularity, boyfriends, etc. and it describes a (possible) eating disorder which is not Anorexia or Bulimia. We empathize with Lara as she keeps gaining weight for no foreseeable reason (though at one point in the book the diagnosis of [the fictitious disorder] "Axell-Crowne is discussed), and she remains obsessed with her weight, as she did when she was thin, but for very different reasons.

The one bright spot in Lara's life is her best friend Molly. She sticks by her side even as she gains weight and falls out of the popular crowd. Eventually the family moves to Michigan, and Lara starts high school as the "fat" girl. However, she continues playing the piano, and ends up with a teacher who sees her talent and invites her to a club where she performs. She meets yet more people who are "different" and as a result becomes much less image/weight-obsessed, less shallow, and more accepting of people who are not perfect, as she once was. Ultimately, while she doesn't totally accept her weight (and she does lose a few pounds toward the end of the book), her outlook on life is changed forever. show less

"If you can dream it, you can achieve it".
Life in the Fat Lane by Cherie Bennett .

2021 Reread. First read a very long time ago. See review below.

Realistic fiction..heartbreaking fiction.

Triggers..Bullying, overdose, attempted suicide, adultery, fat shaming.

OK..This seems to be a love it or hate it. I really enjoyed this book. It was real, gutteral and can easily break your heart. But I can see how it would not be for everyone.

Lara Ardeche is a beauty contest winner, a student in high school, miss popular and stunningly lovely. Has the world by the tail. What could go wrong?

She gains a few pounds..no big deal right. But then she gains another few pounds..and another..

When Lara first starts gaining weight she is not all that concerned. show more But suddenly her weight skyrockets out of control..the thing is she is not eating anything more then she always did and she is exercising too. What is happening to Lara?

To say this book is well written does not do it justice. I was so touched by this story and all the people in it. Sometimes when reading YA, it is a struggle because the book feels to (for lack of a better term) "teenage" for me. Not this one. Rarely have I been so moved by a YA book.

Some would argue and have argued that Lara is a cold mean person. That is true or at least certain aspects of her are. Nobody is black and white. We all have shades of gray. That is shown here, not just through Lara but through her family, her boyfriend and her friends.

There IS Fat Shaming here and I warn you it is brutal. But I do not think the author meant to insult overweight people. I think she is trying to show the pervasive effect of bullying. And she chose to do it by showcasing the life of a beauty queen who turns into everything she had once made fun of.

If you will think back to your high school years..ANYONE who was different was bullied. I know many a person who was picked on including myself. Among the issues myself and the people I know were picked on for include:

Weight of coarse BUT..

Glasses

Intelligence..being both to smart or not smart enough

Not having designer jeans

being to quiet

being to talkative

looking "dirty"

Reading to much

crying to easily

Anything and everything else one can think of.

Basically, this book is the opposite of Jemima J, a book I LOATHED and found way more offensive than this one.

But I think if someone has a tough time reading about bullying or teasing they may not like this book because alot of that happens here. So proceed with caution. I was impressed by the fact that the author did not neatly wrap things up as things are very rarely perfect and tidy in reality.

I would give this 4.5 stars. I found it to be an absorbing, deeply moving and well written book. show less

A "popular" high school student has a metabolic disorder that causes her to gain lots of weight.

On the one hand, this is at times a pretty accurate account of what it's like to be a fat woman - the world is against you, people can be nasty and judgmental just because of how you look, and much of life seems off-limits...even if many of the limits are only sociatal pressure.

On the other hand, the book emphasizes the "good fat" vs "bad fat" myth, for example that it's "ok" for one person to be fat because you know they have a disorder, and that somehow sets them apart from all the other fatties who obviously just eat too much and sit on their butts all day. It's a difficult prejudice to shake, but it would have been nice to see the show more characters try a little harder.

I was afraid the book would end with the main character losing all the progress she had made, and it nearly did, but overall it wasn't bad. Not recommended to people who are feeling fragile or self-conscious, but potentially recommended to people who don't understand what it's like to be fat in a fat-phobic world. show less

I first read this book as a teenager. Recently I stumbled upon it on an online library and was able to borrow it to read again. It was pretty cool to read it again after all these years.

I love the story, I feel it so much. Although, I had trouble taking the main character seriously, when she was all melodramatic about gaining 10 pounds. But as she continued to gain weight, despite efforts not to, I felt more and more empathetic. Although *spoiler* when she broke up with her boyfriend because she thought he didn't want her anymore because of her weight, I feel like she jumped the gun far too quickly. I mean, I am self conscious, but if I had a great guy who wanted to be with me despite how I looked, I wouldn't be so quick to leave him. show more But I guess I get it, she had always been skinny, and sudden major weight gain would be a shock to her body image. She is kind of that opposite of me, I have never been skinny, yet I felt trapped in the wrong body, and she has always been skinny and unexplicably gained a lot of weight in a short period of time. What I *can* relate to is the frustration of going to extreme measures to lose weight, and still not being able to, and having people assume that you are eating more than you say. Nobody really knows unless they are in that situation. Of course, the metabolic disorder she has is not real, but it acts in a way that my body has behaved, I have gone through periods of starvation, and still managed to lose very little weight and/or maintain.

I would recommend this book for people who have dealt with with issues, bullying, hate, or just those who care about the issues. Also, if you are one of the many unsympathetic types, I would read it to get a feeling for what it would be like to be in the shoes of someone who has to struggle with their weight. People don't "choose" to gain weight, in my experience, most of the time you don't even realize how bad it is until you hit rock bottom, and most of the time there are underlying issues that make it extremely difficult to fix it, and it does not help to have judgemental people talking down/making fun of you.

I would say that this book would be good for Tweens and up. It really depends on the person. I was probably in my mid-late teens when I read it the first time, and now I am 32. I enjoyed it equally both times. I feel it is a story that anyone could relate to on some level. show less

It's definitely an interesting book in that it embodies the ultimate chunky-girl fantasy: Beautiful Thin Girl Becomes Inexplicably and Irreversibly Fat. That is the problem, however --- the narrative would have been much more compelling had she developed an overeating disorder and had actually gotten fat.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS A SPOILER!!!
I haven’t read anything by Cherie Bennett in awhile, but I remember enjoying her column ‘Hey, Cherie!’ when I was a teen. I’ve had this book on my to-be-read list for a while and once I finally picked it up, I didn’t want to put it down.
Lara is that girl you wished you could be in high school. Home coming queen and pageant winner, courteous and sweet (to your face, at least), Lara loved life. Then one day she begins to gain weight…and gain…and gain. She is eventually diagnosed with Axel-Crowne syndrome (fictional metabolic disease), and as her waistline gets larger, her group of friends gets smaller.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
The ending really has me torn here. At first I was really upset and show more annoyed that Lara didn’t learn anything while she was fat. Throughout the whole book she had contempt for “fat kids,” and even after she was diagnosed with Axel-Crowne and weighed over 200 pounds she still didn’t consider herself “one of those kids.” It would have been nice to see Lara learn some humility. On the other hand, I often complain that books always have a happy ending, and the fact that she didn’t learn humility shows that this book has a very realistic and non-Hollywood ending. I appreciate that Cherie Bennett keeps it real. show less