WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN by Lionel Shriver

“I have a confession to make. For all my raggin on you in those days, I’ve become shamefully dependent on television. In fact, as long am I’m baring all: One evening last month in the middle of Frasier, the tube winked out cold, and I’m afraid that I rather fell apart—banging the set, plugging and unplugging, wiggling knobs. I’m long past weeping over ‘Thursday’ on a regular basis, but I go into a frenzy when I can’t find out how Niles takes the news that Daphne’s going to marry Donnie.”

It amazes me when an author has the guts to walk into the most untenable of situations (a mother unsure of her love for her extremely difficult son, a marriage cleaved by a child—that child committing mass murder) and open our eyes with the smallest of details, the largest of emotions, and bring empathy without a whiff of sentimentality meant to let the reader off easy. Lionel Shriver achieved this and more with We Need to Talk About Kevin.

HALF A LIFE by Darin Strauss

“Half my life ago, I killed a girl . . . Celine Zilke, the girl on the bike, was sixteen and always will be sixteen.”

The fragility of a life is matched in this book by the fragility of one who takes a life. Author Darin Straus staggered me with this book. He lost his way for many years after accidently killing a girl (a high school classmate) who rode her bike into the path of his car. His achingly simple and profound prose paints a picture of how a boy was thrown into a manhood way beyond his years, and spent his life trying to live for two.

I’M WITH FATTY: LOSING FIFTY POUNDS IN FIFTY MISERABLE WEEKS by Edward Ugel

“I’m haunted by mirrors. Mirrors are like Kryptonite to a fat person—as are cameras. I’ve gained so much weight over the past few years, the last thing I wasn’t to do is see myself in a mirror or a photograph. I know how I look. I surely don’t need my wife posting yet another jowly picture of me on Facebook for her 657 “friends” to enjoy. Ah, Facebook . . . how I loathe you.”

Do I need to write one word after giving you the opening of this book by Edward Ugel. Suffice it to say that this is not (at least to me) a guide most will follow to lose weight (unless you run to things like high colonics and liquid diets) but it is a book that will provide that click of honesty about how self-hating one becomes when one gets fat—who else are we allowed to openly mock and despise as much as fat people?