Conversations With the Fat Girl by Liza Palmer

It seems that she ran for the hills screaming after her mother died suddenly and tragically five years before, leaving her closest blood relatives at arm’s length. (Earl Grey is seemingly the best.) What Hawkes doesn’t really have, however, is a family. It turns out, however, that while A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents, has its share of narrative problems, it’s a remarkably pleasant read and a bit of a page-turner even for those of us who are not heterosexual females.Ī Field Guide to Burying Your Parents concerns Grace Hawkes, a 35-year-old working professional who seems to have it all: a used BMW as a mode of transportation, a doting boyfriend, and close access to her favourite teashops. As for the rest of us, including straight males like myself, what we’re left with is another book seemingly aimed at being little more than cannon fodder. If you’re a young, professional woman, and you like books by Sophie Kinsella, Emily Giffin, and Jennifer Weiner – books that are pleasantly non-offensive and aimed pretty much at the lowest common denominator on the female side of the fence – you’ll want to read A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents. What we have here is a shining example of a much-maligned genre of book doom. I should have paid closer attention to the thumbnail on Amazon, and judged this book – which is author Liza Palmer’s third novel after Conversations with the Fat Girl (2005) and Seeing Me Naked (2008)– solely on that criteria. The blurbs about A Field Guide To Burying Your Parents had me expecting a nice, literary family drama along the lines of, say … Joyce Carol Oates. Sometimes you pick up a book, and you don’t know what you’re in for.

Conversations With the Fat Girl by Liza Palmer