Nobody’s writing novels about fat people confronting their weight. And that’s a problem.
I started waddling down the heavily reinforced road to Fat Fiction Town when a journalist asked me about the protagonist in my debut novel, The French Revolution: a wildly overweight former pastry chef/current copyshop cashier who’s surly, stubborn, hilarious, slightly evil, and by far my favorite character.
I’m a man, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I like romantic comedies. Notting Hill is my favorite, a picture-perfect execution of the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-runs-after-girl-with-the-help-of-his-quirky-friends formula, but I even enjoy the lesser, second-tier jobs like Two Weeks Notice, Runaway Bride, or this year’s The Proposal. I enjoy these films in the same way I like action flicks such as Die Hard or Crank 2: they abide by the genre’s blueprint and let me lose myself in their silly worlds for two hours.
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