Life in the Fat Lane

OK, I confess: I'm a 30 - year old mother with a career, and I'm still reading teenage fiction. How sad is that? Not at all, actually, when it's written as well as this book. Imagine: you are lovely Lara, Little Miss Popular, Homecoming Queen. Life is sweet. Mammy's rich and Daddy is good looking. Your boyfriend is deep and sensitive(even if not quite as popular as the one you dumped last year). You are friends with the cool crowd and wonder on occasions if your best friend Molly, who has a tendency to speak her mind and carries a few pounds too many, matches up. But you are a good girl, who offers Molly and other plump unfortunates condescending advice on how to improve themselves. And then you get fat. Not just a little overweight, but really, massively fat.Even without eating anything .Your positive attitude and discipline don't seem to help. Suddenly you are at the receiving end of pitying glances and "helpful" advice.You are no longer cool or cute. Your boyfriend still loves you but"just isn't in love anymore..." This excellent and inventive book deals with the inner turmoil of a Prom Queen's descent into fat hell. What I liked best was that the author resolutely refuses all easy cop outs. Lara now knows how fat people feel, but it makes her no wiser.The fat girl that she has patronised doesn't suddenly become her best friend. No, she visits Lara in hospital and gloats at her misfortune. Lara doesn't fall in love with the fat boy at her new school, they don't go on a diet and live happily ever after. But Lara does learn to live with her condition and learns a few hard lessons in the process. The quality of the writing is superb. All in all, a worthwhile book not only for adolescents.

I highly recommend this book to any teenage girl today. I could relate to this book so well because it didn't sound like some out-of-it adult writing it, but, it actually felt as though I had entered the main character's head it was so realistic. LIFE IN THE FAT LANE made me both laugh and cry. Lara's encounter with people at school was so much like what happens to teased kids at my school that it was scary. This is a MUST READ! Cherie Bennett should be congraulated for an awesome job!

What's the horrible part about this book? Well truthfully there is no horrible part really. Just the way the characters have the nerve to act. But that's what makes this such a moving, gripping book. The issues delt with in this book, although they may seem a little far fetched (does anyone really gain 100 pounds in less than a year? ), are REAL issues. Popularity, revenge, and bad family life are things most teenagers deal with every day. I loved this book and I think others will too.

As a twelve-year-old eighth-grader who has never had a weight problem, I can't fully understand what Lara Ardeche, perfect homecoming queen turned overweight and confused, would be going through. Lara has always been the talk of the school. Before she was diagnosed with "Axell-Crowne Syndrome", she had the perfect parents, perfect boyfriend, perfect looks, perfect grades, perfect friends...everything that turned out to be not so perfect. After she was diagnosed with the syndrome and started gaining weight, she was still the talk of the school, but in a way which you cannot imagine, unless, of course, you read this novel. "Life In the Fat Lane" is not down to the tiniest detail unrealistic. The way students behave is perfectly described in this book, nothing more could be said. The language, thoughts, and worries of Lara and her peers all add up to make a fantastic novel...a novel that makes you think, makes you change your ways, and makes you never want to put it down again.

As I flipped through "Life in the Fat Lane" I realized that being thin isn't everything. I was moved to tears many times while reading this wonderful novel. I found myself seeing how I was hurting my body while trying to lose weight. I've always been over weight and when I heard of this book I told myself that I would read it and take its information into consideration. Being from a small town where you find yourself out of work unless you look "good" is hard especially when you are a teenager. This book by Cherie Bennett made me realize that you don't have to look like a model for someone to care about you. In our society we tend to judge people on how they look, this book tells us that even the fattest person could have been Prom Queen, Model looking, or beautiful at one time. I have now tryed not to get down on myself when I find something doesn't fit, or I feel fat, whatever the case may be. It takes a lot to change many years of socie! ty saying, "NO you can't do this" and "NO you can't wear that", all because of the way you look. Thanks a lot Cherie for writting a book that made me see the light!