book thought dumplin
I read dumplin and am typing up thoughts you can unfollow me idrc im typing up a space to think bc i will lose a word document
feb - 23- 2021 I read dumplin and fat angie and fat angie was terrible.
fat angie covers the fat girl lesbian angle while dumplin is more hetero best friend + mom trouble
fat angie also has mom trouble but fat angies mom is just cartoonishly bad rather than sort of subtle and complex. but there are straight up abusive moms out there. fat angie just takes it so far that its unbelievable. it’s too many extremes at once. dead sister war hero, mean adopted brother, mean mom, absentee dad, super duper bullied, meets a manic pixie dream girl, literally has a forest gump moment at the end. it just doesn’t feel based in reality to me. but maybe thats because I haven’t experienced a lot of the things angie experienced
Dumplin is sort of designed so that even though the title character is fat and is dealing with other peoples perceptions of her, it sort of creates semi-equivalent body concerns with hannah and even ellen. there;s also a more complex outlook on the internal world of other people in the book whereas in fat angie the characters are more just one or two traits that are just blown to the greatest extreme possible. it makes sense in a movie or...maybe a short play but not in a novel where you have pages to play with.
another stupid thing about fat angie is that the author is relying on this dumb gimmick of angie relating random stuff to movies and the nreferencing the title and director. but she isn’t really shown as enjoying movies specifically its just weird. i just know that she just watches tv and eats. i don’t really notice an interest in movies as being a strong trait for her.
I have other thoughts and may update later .
