Later, we get even more information about the size of this girl, 'Her nine-year-old daughter, barely four and a half feet tall, had weighed in at one hundred and fourteen pounds.' THE HORROR. 'Aren't you, Gracie?' she said, placing her hands on her daughter's puffy shoulders, pressing down through the marshmallow of coat to the fat girl beneath.' There were big handfuls of flesh, like yeasty dough, popping out from the edges of her Lycra suit - a fleshy jack-in-the-box all around.'Ī stranger asks how old her daughter is and her mother responds thusly, ''Almost ten,' Tina told her, as nicely as she could manage. 'Gracie barely fit into her swimsuit from the summer before. 'She was huge, he saw, when she appeared at the door.' 'He remembered the first time he'd seen her, standing at his office door - as wide as a penny that had been left out on the train tracks flattened to twice its normal size by the force of a locomotive roaring through.' I mean, for real, these are just a few of the many, many examples of the way the author describes this girl: I mean, I know she's a kid, but still - that's hardly the shocking obesity he insists it is. He talks about her like she's just this gargantuan person who has to walk sideways through doors, then later specifies that she's 20 pounds overweight. She is overweight, which you will never, ever forget reading this book because the author insists on mentioning it every single time the girl is brought up. The daughter in question is named Grace and she is a child in elementary school. But, spoilsport that I am, I had one huge issue with it: The way the author treated the daughter of one of the minor characters.

The story itself is okay and I can see that there would be an audience who would eat it up and be intrigued.

Emma is just out of prison and is trying to get back to life, and there are personal and professional issues she must work through. The story revolves around Emma, a woman who is clearly inspired by Martha Stewart, Emma's family, and Emma's series of assistants. Described as 'delicious' by Vogue and a 'touchingly bittersweet comedy of urban existence' by USA Today, I found it to be neither.

Emma's Table by Philip Galanes