Obesity is a terribly touchy topic. It requires a high degree of tact to address the subject without hurting the vulnerable egos of overweight readers. And scribblers who tackle this hot potato without exercising the requisite caution risk sounding insensitive, if not downright disrespectful.
There's a surfeit of non-fiction books out there about dieting and the causes of over-eating, but there are precious few good works of literature featuring obese characters that manage to handle this issue both honestly and sensitively.
Big Brother, the latest novel by American-born British journalist and author Lionel Shriver, is one that ticks nearly all the boxes.
The story opens with Pandora, a successful 40-something entrepreneur, driving to an airport in Iowa to pick up Edison, the elder brother whom she idolises. At the age of 17, Edison left home to become a jazz pianist in New York. The two have always been close and Pandora has long regarded her charming, rebellious bro as the epitome of coolness. She hasn't seen Edison for four long years, but when she does lay eyes on him again, she doesn't at first recognise him as her brother.
"I was relieved the woman's suitcase had arrived, since the pariah whom she and her seatmate had so cruelly disparaged must have been the very large gentleman whom two flight attendants were rolling into baggage claim in an extra-wide wheelchair. A curious glance in the heavy passenger's direction pierced me with a sympathy so searing I might have been shot. Looking at that man was like falling into a hole, and I had to look away because it is was rude to stare, and even ruder to cry."
The sibling she remembers was fit and trim; now Edison weighs in at 175kg and his life has been turned upside down. He is unemployed and homeless. His wife and child have left him and he has no one to turn to except Pandora.
Big Brother By Lionel Shriver Harper Collins (2013), 344pp Available at Kinokuniya, 443 baht
She takes him back to the house she shares with her husband, Fletcher, and convinces Edison that it's time to go on a serious weight-loss regime.
But problems soon arise. Fletcher is an unflinchingly rigid personality. A self-taught carpenter, he makes wooden furniture that not many people care to look at, never mind purchase. But he excels in exerting control over his body weight through obsessive cycling and a diet so Spartan that his wife mocks him as a "nutritional Nazi".
Tensions increase within the household and the situation gets to the point where Fletcher issues an ultimatum, forcing Pandora to choose between him and her brother. Demoralised, she moves out and agrees to rent accommodation with Edison on condition that he lose 100kg in the space of 12 months. Will her big brother be able to achieve that goal?
The book is divided into three sections: "Up"; "Down"; and "Away". Despite the thinness of its plot compared to Shriver's career-making We Need To Talk About Kevin (which explores a woman's quest to understand her teenage son after he morphs into a mass murderer), Big Brother is loaded with well-crafted prose that examines the intricacy of human emotions and she uses vivid, evocative images to bring her characters to life.
But what make the tale really tick is Shriver's unflinching honesty as she pushes our limits by confronting us with a man who is very difficult to love. Whether he's at the peak of physical perfection or morbidly obese, it seems impossible to empathise with the selfish, snobbish, name-dropping Edison. The co-dependent relationship he has developed with his sister casts him in an even worse light, perhaps, than his dreadful weight problem.
While Big Brother treats obesity and the burdens many of us shoulder out of sheer love, self-image is also one of its core subjects and Shriver devotes a great deal of space to addressing the societal and cultural factors which give rise to, but also stigmatise, people who get obsessive about their weight: those who are too thin as well as those who see themselves as too fat. The book is not without its flaws, however. This reviewer was captivated by the first part, "Up", but a good deal of steam was lost in the ensuing "Down" episode. Shriver may put off some readers by spending too much time debating the finer details: her smooth, flowing prose notwithstanding, she touches on a great many aspects that will perhaps appeal only to those steeped in American social mores: a cultural analysis of food; thoughts on the widespread social obsession with exercising and weight issues; the effects of advertising and corporate marketing activities on people prone to obesity; a reference to watching TV series back in the 1970s, even.
But the author's last few chapters are effective in re-engaging the general reader.
Edison ultimately succeeds in his efforts to lose weight, shedding 100kg, but his sister fails to patch up her marriage and, last we hear of her, Pandora's on her way to the divorce courts.
But that's not the full story.
Big Brother was based on personal experience: in real life, Shriver had a morbidly obese brother whom she took care of; he died a few years back as a result of medical complications. At the soft launch of the novel in Beijing earlier this year, Shriver conceded that there was a lot of herself in the lead female character but noted, self-deprecatingly, that Pandora is a much nicer person that she's ever been.
