Big Girl (PM's Outspoken Authors #25)
Published June 1st 2020 by PM Press (first published May 21st 2020), Paperback 128 pages
These are stories that ambush the reader with Elison's signature style: a drolly disturbing admixture of dry irony and simmering rage. 'El Hugé' reveals how small-town, small-time teens can accomplish Big Ugly Things on their own. 'Big Girl chronicles the media’s fascination with the towering anxieties of a sixty-foot tall teen. 'The Pill', the collection's previously unpublished centerpiece, celebrates a “miracle cure” for obesity that sends society to a grimly delightful new utopia. 'With Such People in It', also new to readers, welcomes us to a brave new world where cowardice is a virtue. 'Gone with Gone with the Wind' is a non-fiction analysis of privilege, denial, literary classics, and personal honesty. 'Afterimage' is a one-way trip into a VR world that’s more “real” than our own.
Also included is 'Guts', which is about just what its title suggests, as well this volume's characteristically frank and thought-provoking Outspoken Interview.
User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This review is only for Hugo and Nebula Awards nominee for Best Novelette The Pill:————
“She wanted what everybody wants. Respect.”
It’s no secret to anyone that fat people are rarely taken seriously in our society — it’s that completely undeserved stigma of being not good enough, lazy, weak-willed, unintelligent that hangs over those with BMIs out of socially accepted range. Meg Ellison takes showing it to a new level in “The Pill”, imagining what is very likely to happen if there’s an easy cure for being fat - a new weight loss pill that lets you shed all the extra pounds (and even the extra skin from all that weight loss) quickly and permanently. Even if you have a 10% chance to die. With even thin people taking the pill just so they would never run a risk of gaining weight. And the world would quickly make it impossible for fat people to continue to exist.
“One in ten kept dying. The average never improved, not in any corner of the globe. There were memorials for the famous and semifamous folks who took the gamble and lost. A congressman here and a comedian there. But everyone was so proud of them that they had died trying to better themselves that all the obituaries and eulogies had a weird, wistful tone to them. As if it was the next best thing to being thin. At least they didn’t have to live that fat life anymore.”
This is a very well-done horror story that can easily become reality. If you think it can’t, you’re kidding yourself. It’s so bleak and uncomfortable in the way it rings true — and quite effective at conveying loneliness and ostracism from the “greater” society.
I do not necessarily love this story - not sure why, but it just doesn’t hit that “love” button in my heart - but I respect the hell out of it.3.5 stars.
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My Hugo and Nebula Awards Reading Project 2021: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Rating: really liked it
Rating for The Pill only, a nomination for the Best Novelette for the Hugo Awards this year.
WOW. Story like this is what makes me love speculative fiction. It's not just well written with an engaging main character but it is chilling, profound, and terrifyingly possible. There's very, very few representation for fat characters in SFF and this one is probably my favorite so far since it does focus on body image, filial and societal dynamics, and of course a certain brave-new-world scenario. Imagine if your world and everything in it literally shrinks and you just don't fit in anymore either physically or communally, you can't even study or work since the office spaces can't accommodate you anymore from chairs to doors, and you have to make your own bed literally since no stores sell your size anymore. And that's not the worst.
I will definitely try to read the other stories in this book.
Rating: really liked it
This is a collection of short stories, a novelette, an interview, and essays. It was a quick read and my first experience reading anything by Meg Elison. What a treat! I officially have a new author on my radar. Her prose is edgy and poetic. Her work is immensely readable and engaging. This collection mostly focuses on the topic of being a fat woman, although not exclusively. She approaches her exploration through speculative fiction and autobiographical essays. I found it all very valuable and insightful given how fatphobic our society is. I appreciated her honesty and wisdom.
One of the essays was about her relationship with Gone with the Wind and how her perceptions of it have changed over many rereads throughout her life. It was a really enjoyable and insightful essay.
Sexual violence? A little. Other content warnings? Fatphobia, death.
Rating: really liked it
There's something magical about reading a book about fat, by a fat author, talking to their fat audience. I love this book.
The stories aren't happy, and there's probably some triggers needed for just acknowledging what life is like for fat people (and our nightmares of how it could become worse) but there's such a fierce and angry joy in the writing.
My favourite in the collection is The Pill, it hints towards my favourite theme (found family) and the protagonist is so confident in knowing herself and seizing happiness where she can.
For nothing else though, I'd love this book for some of the lines in Guts (the last piece),
(view spoiler)
["When their [thin people] talk rolls around to calories and their moral obligation to hate themselves, I typically spread out as wide as I can. I can expand like a jellyfish; it is a particular advantage of the very fat. I conform to the shape of my container like a water balloon. Displaying maximum width, I'll eat anything I can get my hands on while they talk" (hide spoiler)]
Rating: really liked it
If you liked Mona Awad’s “13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl”, you’ll love this. If, however, you cry white lady tears when one of your friends dares to point out that they’re fat when you rail against your own thick ankles or soft belly and say shit back to her like, “I don’t mean YOU,” “I don’t think of you as fat,” or “I didn’t mean it like that, why are you being so mean?” — well this probably isn’t your cup of short stories. Unflinching, authentic, and proves once again that the best way to tell the truth is through fiction.
Rating: really liked it
Meg Elison is a powerhouse writer, and this collection is her monument. The standout for me is "The Pill," which is the best piece of fiction I've ever read about society's many different (and often contradictory) biases against fat people. But every piece in this collection has a sense of fearlessness; of both pain experienced and a refusal to submit to it.
Rating: really liked it
Read for 2021 Hugos
I felt like this story was exactly what Hugo-worthy SFF should be: thought provoking, true enough to life to make you squirm, and with elements of both sadness and hope. The story revolves about a pill to almost magically make people thin, but with some side effects. The protagonist's inner thoughts about how being fat is regarded by society is spot on, and I was happy to read a solid stance on how all people can be regarded as beautiful. The last section of the story got a little weird, but I think only because we don't normally see stories about very large people and how they deal with the world when it's not made for them. For the protagonist to be able to enjoy what some might consider a restricted position was a very mature and resonating result.
Rating: really liked it
Wow!
Rating: really liked it
Sci-fi with an actual fat politic feels SO exciting and rare, but unfortunately the back half of this collection really suffers from the post 2016 US election trend of white women creatives feeling WAY over-inspired to make art about their own experiences with racism. “Such People In It”, which speculates on what would happen to the United States if trump won a second term, was like. Especially cringeworthy to get through.
Rating: really liked it
Meg Elison is a big girl. She's fat. That's not an insult, it's how she describes herself, and it infuses her fiction.
People who are very overweight suffer the scrutiny of strangers and the indignity of a world not sized for them. (Don't get her started about airplane seats.)
While there are other types of stories in this short book, the two that stand out are her essay on her mother's weight-loss surgery and her resistance to it, and her story about a pill that causes drastic weight reduction. The topic is examined further in the interview she does with series editor Terry Bisson.
“The Pill” causes people to violently excrete over half their body weight over a period of weeks until they reach a height/weight proportional size (which is similar for all people). One drawback is the violence of the reaction causes a 10% mortality rate. Would this be acceptable in our world? Meg speculates that people will jump at a 90% chance at attaining a 'normal' weight. Of course, this means that over time fat people disappear from public view. What happens to the few fat people who resist taking the pill?
This is what science fiction can do: It takes an issue (drastic weight reduction through surgery, fat shaming) and reshapes it through a sharp lens to examine the ramifications and assumptions that a society can make.
Meg lives with this everyday and has thought this through carefully. The conclusion of her story may be chilling, but not that far-fetched based on our society's ability to belittle and denigrate those who don't fit in.
Rating: really liked it
This is a little mix of everything, showing off Meg Elison's range. As someone who enjoys dystopian stories, I especially loved The Pill, which is actually what prompted me to buy this book. Although, loved doesn't seem like the exact right word for something so heartwrenching. But like all her stories in this book, The Pill is nuanced. It contains small moments of triumph and joy amid the despair.
I can't wait to see what Meg Elison comes out with next, and I've already pushed The Book of the Unnamed Midwife to the top of my TBR list.
Rating: really liked it
This is a book of short fiction that made me horrendously uncomfortable. That is to say it set out to do something and then did it extremely well. The short stories are a sharp dystopian look at our present society where is is better to be dead than fat to most people and where any deviation from the cishet thin white affluent norm is punished. It's a very good book but it is very bleak
.
Rating: really liked it
I've seen Meg read El Huge and it was possibly my favorite of her performances. Instead of the mountaintop, this book uses it as a launchpad and takes off from there.
Rating: really liked it
I read this all in one sitting and might do it again before the end of the night.
Rating: really liked it
Rating might change. You need time to think this one over.
