Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp

This book is more than just a fat camp story or another memoir. It's raw honesty, full of childlike emotion and great perspective. It's about a girl with low self-esteem being shipped unwillingly to a place she grows to love, and her story of how she lost the weight that made her so unappealing to even her own family.

After I read the last page, I missed Klein. I enjoyed being with her at camp. I loved her friends and really want to know how they turned out.

Reading about Stephanie's parents was not easy. It had to be lonely growing up like that, but it's all she knew, so it was her version of normal. I wanted to hug her and adopt her into my family. I want to call her up now & invite her over to dinner with a sensible dessert.

As a person show more who also struggles with weight issues, I read a lot of my own story in these pages. I never voiced some of my inner thoughts and never heard anyone else do it either. For the first time, I realize all those years of being on the lighter side of fat, I wasn't the only one. show less

I'm not a reader of Stephanie Klein's blog, Greek Tragedy, so I don't know how much of Moose is contained within it's pages. I knew going into it that this might not be the book for me. It's about Klein's experiences at "fat camp" as a young teen-ager and as a fat camp counselor as an older teen-ager. I really dislike when someone's whole life is wrapped up in their weight and food. It's just so boring and pointless. But I was hoping that perhaps Klein had a larger message to share and had managed to come out the other side a more balanced person re. her weight and food, unfortunately I didn't find that to be the case.

I'm sure she isn't actually boring (I think I read that she gets many thousands of visitors to her blog everyday so she show more obviously has something of interest to say to a great many people), but she is still obsessed with her weight. What a shame! I simply can't believe that it isn't possible to be healthy without being twisted over food. I was shocked by her parents, especially her father's, treatment of her as a child: laughing at her being called "moose" by other kids, reminding her that she was overweight, sending her to a weight-loss counselor, not to mention fat camp. Honestly, didn't she count as anything other than a body to her parents? I wonder if they've read it and how they feel now?

The book doesn't promise to change your life, and it doesn't. Instead it's more of a long story about her teen-age fat camp years; and possibly a cautionary tale to parents. I was just hoping for more. show less

(Note: This is a review of an ARC.)

In Moose, Stephanie Klein allows the reader to tag along as she revisits her childhood, detailing negative, damaging, and hurtful experiences that would go on to color the rest of her life. Her crime? Being overweight in a culture obsessed with outward appearances; One that is determined to project its negativity regarding the "wrong" look or body type onto those who don't live up to the standard.

Klein recounts her experiences with candor, humor, and a relaxed, youthful, "it is what it is," "I am who I am" tone, one that immediately put me at ease and just plain made me like her. A great deal of this book is centered around her time spent at fat camp but the book is about so much more than that - a show more woman trying to cope with self-esteem and body image issues. We all deal with those issues. Okay, maybe not all of us but I'd be willing to bet a good portion of us do which is why this book would appeal to almost anyone, whether you've battled weight issues or not. A lot of the feelings she experiences are universal. And then there are those she experienced that only individuals who have suffered from weight issues would identify with. It's okay if you don't identify on that level, but it's still important to read about the experiences and lives of those who do.

Throughout the book she reflects on her experiences and the lessons learned as a result of them, but is careful not to let them alter her "then" reality. I think it would have been very easy for her to go back and try to "clean up" her actions as a young person based on everything she eventually learned, but she always remained true to her character and I appreciated her resolve to tell it like it is. From the beginning she was very honest about the fact that she's a work in progress and is not interested in viewing her experience with rose colored glasses.

The one problem I did have with this book was how disorganized it was at times. There were one too many instances where the story became rather confusing and hard to follow because of all of the flashbacks, flashforwards, and lack of differentiation. I wouldn't have minded a memory being brought up every now and then, but I feel the book would have been much more effective and enjoyable if the past, present, and future were, for the most part, kept there as the story was being told. Interestingly enough, that wasn't enough to put me off reading the book; Usually it's more than enough. I did take of half a star because of it, though.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it. I liked Stephanie, I liked her story, her humor, wisdom, I liked her honesty, and I liked the tone of the book. She did a great job capturing the spirit of a child/teen. She'd probably be very good at writing fiction, specifically young adult fiction. show less

A difficult book to read, not because it was poorly written, but because it hit on so many subjects close to home! Klein really strikes a chord with any reader who has struggled with weight and/or currently does struggle with weight.

This book easily could have been a fat-trashing book, but it really focuses on how the author felt as a preteen and teenager growing up with a weight problem. It showed how the taunts of classmates have long term effects and the gentle "help" that family members suggest aren't very helpful at all.

Klein write with compassion. That's important.

These days the shelves at the local bookstore are overrun with memoirs childhood and adolescence - of growing up with alcoholic parents, growing up a nerd, growing up in foster care, or just plain growing up with nothing special to recommend it. Some hit the mark and others are a bit of a disappointment. Stephanie Klein's memoir, Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp is definitely the former. Growing up as a "chubby" kid myself, I could identify with her feelings of isolation, shame, and frustration. At times, they hit a little too close to home. But you don't have to have suffered through a childhood weight problem or be that person who looks in the mirror and sees fat regardless of what the little tag in your jeans says to enjoy this book. show more Anyone who has feelings of being a little bit "different" will find something to relate to and will appreciate Klein's honesty and wit. show less

Stephanie Klein was an overweight little girl whose well-meaning mother sent her to a nutritionist, and then to "fat camp." Here all the usual dramas of adolescence played out: she fell in love, made friends and enemies, and learned to focus even more on her weight in even more unhealthy ways.
I was thrilled to receive this book for my first early review, since I love memoirs, especially the rare ones that take place at sleepover camp. I loved the tone, the pace, the balance between dialog and narrative, and the pitch-perfect accuracy of teen-age talk - she could have been transcribing from a tape recorder. Just a few things prevented me from giving this book a "5," many of them having to do with context and the arc of the narrative. show more First, I wish the driving focus had been even more on the camp. Many of the references at the beginning and end to other camps she'd been to, and to kids at school before and after fat camp, were confusing because she dealt with them so briefly. Also, I never got a good sense of her relationship to her sister, who went to the camp with her even though she apparently was not overweight. But these are small points. Klein's writing is so captivating I now want to read her earlier memoir "Straight Up and Dirty." show less

This is one of those situations where my inquisitive nature caused too much information to spoil the experience. I really liked Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp. Sure, I had a few qualms, but overall, I was going to write a solid review supporting the time spent reading the book. But then… I just had to see if the author had a website.

Not only does Ms. Stephanie Klein have a website, it seems the damned thing is mighty popular and was a jumping point for her writing career. That’s fine. I wish I could write well enough to earn such attention. The problem occurred when I saw the beautiful pictures of Ms. Klein adorning her blog. She’s thin and pretty. How could that woman write such an understanding book, one that clearly denotes the show more pain and effort of carrying rolls of fat on one’s person?

Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp lays all of Klein’s pain and disparagement on the line. She holds nothing back. Her greatest proficiency is prostrating herself. Not only is this a tale of struggling with weight, but a tale of struggling to fit, period. Klein examines her own prejudices where she delineates how fat she’s willing to date and how even the ‘fat campers’ divide into a hierarchy of the more or less repellent. I found it amazing to watch this structural division of misfits who’d normally form the outsiders in the popular cliques. It’s a solid vignette in the coming-of-age genre with Klein emerging victorious, but not unscathed.

Of course there were a few nit-picky qualms. My first was with the editing. Some passages are allowed to become tedious and the beginning and end are almost extraneous to the tale. Due to the overdevelopment in these areas, a few effects are left underdeveloped. My second qualm concerns the uneven skidding between the years that form the fat camp experience. Ms. Klein began with an author’s note explaining that she’d condensed years of fat camp survival into a single year. Her apologetic tone protects her from being Freyed (my term referring to Oprah calling you a liar because you flower-up your memoir), but presumes we readers aren’t smart enough to understand that memoirs come with embellishments… (end of rant).

I’d recommend this book to older teens, anyone who enjoys honest coming-of-age tales, memoirs and especially those who have struggled with weight issues.

Review first published on Many A Quaint & Curious Volume show less