Fat Skeletons

Fat Skeletons isn't a very big book, so it's appropriate that you seem interested withing five pages or so. And there's a good reason - the style is witty and transfixing. You won't find a capital letter, the word "and" written out, or many completed sentences. What reads is something like a confessional poem constricted into paragraphs, creating real intimacy around Mara. Which we barely need considering the vivid specificity of her life. Witness the scene in which she outtalks a sleazebag on a train in six languages - it shows Mara's prickly independent streak while reading like a mournful memoir. Still, it's hard to deny the book loses steam as it goes along. Luckily, its first half is so enticing, you barely notice - there's enough steam left over.