The winner of
the Amazon.ca First Novel Award was announced yesterday. It was given to Mona Awad for 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl.
Growing up in
the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked
the way she looks—even though her best friend Mel says she’s the pretty one.
She starts dating guys online, but she’s afraid to send pictures, even when her
skinny friend China does her makeup: she knows no one would want her if they
could really see her. So she starts to lose. With punishing drive, she counts
almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted
dresses. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from
her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror. But no
matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat
girl?
In her hilarious,
and at times shocking debut, Mona Awad simultaneously skewers the body
image-obsessed culture that tells women they have no value outside their
physical appearance, and delivers a tender and moving depiction of a lovably
difficult young woman whose life is hijacked by her struggle to conform (https://www.amazon.ca/13-Ways-Looking-Fat-Girl/dp/0143194798/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464355205&sr=1-1&keywords=13+ways+of+looking+at+a+fat+girl).
2016 is the
40th anniversary of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award which honours the best
Canadian debut novels of the year.
Appropriately, the prize is $40,000.
The other
five finalists received $4,000 each; for summaries of these finalists, see my
blog of April 25: http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2016/04/amazonca-first-novel-award-finalists.html.
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