ARA Review by swoverby of Eating Bull

[swoverby]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Eating Bull.]

---

3 out of 5 stars

---

Share This Review

---

EATING BULL BY CARRIE RUBIN

Reviewer - Susan Swanson

In Eating Bull the reader gets to intimately know teenager Jeremy who, because of obesity, suffers bullying at the hands of not only his mother's boyfriend and the kids at school, but his very own grandfather. A second character in the story, "Darwin" -- psychopath who hates fat people and has made it his goal to put an end to them by taking their lives in grisly murders -- sets his vicious sites on Jeremy, Jeremy's overweight mother, and a social worker/nurse named Sue. Sue is the outspoken do-gooder who has convinced Jeremy to sue the food industry for contributing to his obesity and Darwin sees this lawsuit as frivolous but advantageous in meeting his goal of convincing the public that the obese must be eliminated.

And then there's Jeremy's mother Connie, a kind woman, single and working two jobs, who has no time to prepare healthy meals, instead bringing home fast food that contributes to both her own and her son's weight problems. Though Jeremy attends a "fat clinic,' as he calls it, his struggle is unending, and the ups and downs of controlling his dietary urges plague him. Besides that, exercises prescribed for him are beyond the capacity of a morbidly obese person.

Jeremy is one-sixteenth Creek Indian, and that figures in the high impact end to the story, when Jeremy, Sue, and Connie meet up with Darwin in a chilling confrontation brought on by a coincidental overheard remark. Another strand to the story is Sue's daughter Kayla, who seems to have anorexia. And that's not all -- the tale is peopled with troubled beings: a bully whose problems are likely exacerbated by a bullying father and a skinny little black with vitiligo whose parents overprotect him. Not to mention a grandfather with agoraphobia and a simpering, weak mother.

Though I see a need for this novel's message -- food addiction and the food industry's role in obesity -- I had problems with the book in many ways. For one, the dialogue was unrealistic. "It's a high-capacity scale, goes up to five hundred pounds" and "Here. I'm not sure this will fit but it's the only one that will come close" are examples of improbable comments from medical personnel who surely have been trained in the handling of patients. The grandfather's tirades are equally implausible.

But there's more that troubles this reader. Character descriptions and motivations are described and then reiterated over and over as though the reader is a first grader with no capacity for nuance. And then there are the problems with punctuation, particularly in the case of commas that don't properly delineate clauses and phrases. A good editor may have helped in this regard, and helped also with such words as "Yeeees" when the word should have been "Yessss." As well, an editor may have eliminated some characters and narrative that go nowhere or are simply excessive.

This is not my kind of book for all the above reasons. But more than anything, it is the excessive cruelty and gore that turned me off. If you love that kind of stuff, enjoy!

I give Eating Bull 3 out of 5 stars.

***
View Eating Bull on Bookshelves