Review: Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein

Dec 17, 2009 by

Title: Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp
Author: Stephanie Klein
Publisher: William Morrow (Harper Collins)
Publication Date: May 27, 2008

From Goodreads.com
With her signature acerbic wit and captivating insight, the author of the wildly popular Straight Up and Dirty offers a powerful and beautifully stark portrait of adolescence.

While she is pregnant with twins, one sentence uttered by her doctor sends Stephanie Klein reeling: “You need to gain fifty pounds.” Instantly, an adolescence filled with insecurity and embarrassment comes flooding back. Though she is determined to gain the weight for the health of her babies, even if it means she’ll “weigh more than a Honda” she can only express her deep fear by telling her doctor simply, “I used to be fat.”

Klein was an eighth grader with a weight problem. It was a problem at school, where the boys called her “Moose,” and it was a problem at home, where her father reminded her, “No one likes fat girls.” After many frustrating sessions with a nutritionist known as the fat doctor of Roslyn Heights, Long Island, Klein’s parents enrolled her for a summer at fat camp. Determined to return to school thin and popular, without her “lard arms” and “puckered ham,” Stephanie embarked on a memorable journey that would shape more than just her body. It would shape her life.

In the ever-shifting terrain between fat and thin, adulthood and childhood, cellulite and starvation, Klein shares the cutting details of what it truly feels like to be an overweight child, from the stinging taunts of classmates, to the off-color remarks of her own father, to her thin mother’s compulsive dissatisfaction with her own body.

Calling upon her childhood diary entries, Klein reveals her deepest thoughts and feelings from that turbulent, hopeful time, baring her soul and making her heartache palpable.

Whether Klein is describing her life as a chubby adolescent camper, getting weighed on a meat scale, petting past curfew, and “chunky dunking” in the lake or what it’s like now as a fit mother, having one-sided conversations with her newborn twins about the therapy they’ll one day need, this hilarious yet grippingly vulnerable book will remind you what it was like to feel like an outsider, to desperately seek the right outfit, the right slang, the best comeback, or whatever that unattainable something was that would finally make you fit in.

I waited a long time with this one on my wishlist at Paperbackswap. I finally got a copy, and tried to let it sit on my shelf for awhile (since I had other books that should have had their turn next), but I ended up reading it almost right away.

I was most excited about the camp aspect, because I was a big camp person in my youth. I spent many, many years at a youth camp, and really wanted to hear a story from a camp aspect. What I found instead was a camp story with mostly narratives and monologues from Stephanie (the author) about why the certain event happened that way or how it had made her feel later. Which, normally I wouldn’t mind, except I really wanted that camp aspect.

That being said, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I was hoping. I wanted a lot more dialogue and camp events and stories, and it was mostly focused on her weight and the issues surrounding that. I guess I’ll be on the look-out for another camp story to quench my summer camp thirst!

Book Cover: 4/5
Book Title: 3/5
Plot: 7/10
Characters: 6/10
Writing: 8/10
Ending: 7/10

Overall: 35/50

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2 Comments

  1. itsJUSTme-wendy
    December 17, 2009

    Oh! wow that is too bad. I have heard of this book and I too wanted to read it. That is so sad that it is not what is expected.
    I tried to think of a camp book and couldn't think of any.

    Reply
  2. stacybuckeye
    December 22, 2009

    I loved camp growing up! Not sure that I'd be interested in this one though.

    Reply

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