My Mad Fat Diary | I am 99% Certain That I am British.

Title: My Mad Fat Diary

Author: Rae Earl

Genre: Young Adult, Memoir

Published: April 19, 2016 by St. Martin’s Griffin (In the USA, anyway) 

Thank you to St. Martin’s Griffin for providing a review copy! This in no way melts away my judgemental, grumpy reviewing skills.

It’s 1989 and Rae is a fat, boy-mad 17-year-old girl, living in Stamford, Lincolnshire with her mum and their deaf white cat in a council house with a mint off-green bath suite and a larder Rae can’t keep away from. This is the hilarious and touching real-life diary she kept during that fateful year – with characters like her evil friend Bethany, Bethany’s besotted boyfriend, and the boys from the grammar school up the road (who have code names like Haddock and Battered Sausage).

My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary evokes a vanished time when Charles and Di are still together, the Berlin wall is up, Kylie is expected to disappear from the charts at any moment and it’s £1 for a Snakebite and Black in the Vaults pub. My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary will appeal to anyone who’s lived through the 1980s. But it will also strike a chord with anyone who’s ever been a confused, lonely teenager who clashes with their mother, takes themselves VERY seriously and has no idea how hilarious they are. 

  
  

• This book gives SO much perspective. Perspective into living in the 80s, perspective to being bullied and harassed because of your weight, perspective into the world of Rae Earl. And that’s what makes literature so great, the ability to melt into someone’s world and experience it fully. SO YAY TO THIS BOOK FOR THAT!
• I am 99% certain I am British. This book is set in England. Ergo, I am pleased. I have found my people mates. 

  

• This book is praised for being raw…I believe it’s a bit too raw. It reads like a diary, a memoir—and that’s what it’s supposed to be, I get it. But I really didn’t enjoy it. The format threw me off. As exciting as Rae Earl’s life is, it’s not exciting enough. It doesn’t have a plot. It didn’t appeal to me. Oops. Sorry.
• I love those books that inspire you, that make you want to get out there and start a revolution. This…isn’t that book. There’s a big theme of a lack of motivation, and it’s highly infectious. I understand that there was a different purpose. Okay. Cool. That’s great. But I don’t have to like it. It brought me down, actually. That’s not what I need when I read.

  
A noble effort, simply not for me. BUT BONUS POINTS FOR THE BRITISH THING THOUGH.

What British books delight you? How has literature affected your perspective?

 

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