Butter by Erin Lange
Jun. 23rd, 2014 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
”I can’t take another year in this fat suit, but I can end this year with a bang. If you can stomach it, you’re invited to watch … as I eat myself to death.
16-year-old Butter tries to fly under the radar at his high school in Scottsdale, Arizona but that’s not easy when he weighs 423 pounds and needs his own special reinforced desk and dinner table because normal furniture can’t cope with his weight.
Butter’s closest friend is Tucker - a kid from the poorer side of the city who he met at summer fat camp and shares a doctor with - but now Tucker’s started to lose weight, he’s pulling away from Butter. Butter also has a crush on Anna, a girl in the popular clique, who he’s been romancing anonymously on line for several months and who wants to meet him in person on New Year’s Eve.
After being humiliated at school and discovering Anna’s real feelings for him, Butter decides to kill himself. He sets up a website setting out his resolution to eat himself to death on New Year’s Eve, and invites everyone to watch. But his suicide promise becomes his passport into the cool clique and as his last weeks play out, Butter starts to wonder if he actually has things to live for, especially as he grows closer to Anna …
Erin Lange’s debut YA novel (shortlisted for the 2014 Waterstone’s Children’s Prize) is a blistering look at obesity, bullying and self-image through the eyes of a morbidly obese boy. Butter’s a complicated character, both a victim of bullying and an author of his own situation. I particularly loved his relationship with his parents – both his mother’s guilt and complicity in his overeating and his father’s inability to handle it. Butter’s change of fortune with the cool kids is well handled and I believed in their reactions and how their behaviour stems from boredom as much as malice. Also great is a conversation between Anna and Butter, which goes straight to the heart of the theme of perception and projection. If I’m going to nitpick, then I think that Butter’s talent for the saxophone is slightly overegged and risks coming across as compensation for his weight (although I believed in a pivotal confrontation between him and his music professor). I would have also liked some idea of there being consequences for those who egged Butter on, rather than what we get (which is rather open-ended). That said though, I thought this was a great, thought-provoking and darkly funny book and look forward to Lange’s next novel.
The Verdict:
Erin Lange’s debut YA novel (shortlisted for the 2014 Waterstone’s Children’s Prize) is a blistering look at obesity, bullying and self-image through the eyes of a morbidly obese boy. Butter’s a complicated character, both a victim of bullying and an author of his own situation. I particularly loved his relationship with his parents – both his mother’s guilt and complicity in his overeating and his father’s inability to handle it. Butter’s change of fortune with the cool kids is well handled and I believed in their reactions and how their behaviour stems from boredom as much as malice. Also great is a conversation between Anna and Butter, which goes straight to the heart of the theme of perception and projection. If I’m going to nitpick, then I think that Butter’s talent for the saxophone is slightly overegged and risks coming across as compensation for his weight (although I believed in a pivotal confrontation between him and his music professor). I would have also liked some idea of there being consequences for those who egged Butter on, rather than what we get (which is rather open-ended). That said though, I thought this was a great, thought-provoking and darkly funny book and look forward to Lange’s next novel.
16-year-old Butter tries to fly under the radar at his high school in Scottsdale, Arizona but that’s not easy when he weighs 423 pounds and needs his own special reinforced desk and dinner table because normal furniture can’t cope with his weight.
Butter’s closest friend is Tucker - a kid from the poorer side of the city who he met at summer fat camp and shares a doctor with - but now Tucker’s started to lose weight, he’s pulling away from Butter. Butter also has a crush on Anna, a girl in the popular clique, who he’s been romancing anonymously on line for several months and who wants to meet him in person on New Year’s Eve.
After being humiliated at school and discovering Anna’s real feelings for him, Butter decides to kill himself. He sets up a website setting out his resolution to eat himself to death on New Year’s Eve, and invites everyone to watch. But his suicide promise becomes his passport into the cool clique and as his last weeks play out, Butter starts to wonder if he actually has things to live for, especially as he grows closer to Anna …
Erin Lange’s debut YA novel (shortlisted for the 2014 Waterstone’s Children’s Prize) is a blistering look at obesity, bullying and self-image through the eyes of a morbidly obese boy. Butter’s a complicated character, both a victim of bullying and an author of his own situation. I particularly loved his relationship with his parents – both his mother’s guilt and complicity in his overeating and his father’s inability to handle it. Butter’s change of fortune with the cool kids is well handled and I believed in their reactions and how their behaviour stems from boredom as much as malice. Also great is a conversation between Anna and Butter, which goes straight to the heart of the theme of perception and projection. If I’m going to nitpick, then I think that Butter’s talent for the saxophone is slightly overegged and risks coming across as compensation for his weight (although I believed in a pivotal confrontation between him and his music professor). I would have also liked some idea of there being consequences for those who egged Butter on, rather than what we get (which is rather open-ended). That said though, I thought this was a great, thought-provoking and darkly funny book and look forward to Lange’s next novel.
The Verdict:
Erin Lange’s debut YA novel (shortlisted for the 2014 Waterstone’s Children’s Prize) is a blistering look at obesity, bullying and self-image through the eyes of a morbidly obese boy. Butter’s a complicated character, both a victim of bullying and an author of his own situation. I particularly loved his relationship with his parents – both his mother’s guilt and complicity in his overeating and his father’s inability to handle it. Butter’s change of fortune with the cool kids is well handled and I believed in their reactions and how their behaviour stems from boredom as much as malice. Also great is a conversation between Anna and Butter, which goes straight to the heart of the theme of perception and projection. If I’m going to nitpick, then I think that Butter’s talent for the saxophone is slightly overegged and risks coming across as compensation for his weight (although I believed in a pivotal confrontation between him and his music professor). I would have also liked some idea of there being consequences for those who egged Butter on, rather than what we get (which is rather open-ended). That said though, I thought this was a great, thought-provoking and darkly funny book and look forward to Lange’s next novel.
