Is 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl about an eating disorder?

It deals closely with disordered eating, compulsive exercise, and self-hatred, but it is better described as a novel about body image obsession and the culture that feeds it. Lizzie's relationship with food and weight is central, yet the book is also about friendship, desire, and how others judge women. Readers sensitive to these themes should approach it with care.

How does it compare to Bunny, Awad's later novel?

Bunny is more overtly surreal and set in an MFA program, leaning into dark fantasy and campus satire. 13 Ways is more grounded and realistic, with a sharper focus on one woman's inner life. Readers who like Awad's humor and unsettling tone will find both books rewarding, but this debut is the more intimate of the two.

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Cover of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

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13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

Name: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Author: Mona Awad
ISBN: 9780143128489

by Mona Awad

Fiction

Mona Awad's debut turns a body-image spiral into a sharp, funny, uncomfortable portrait of how women are taught to measure their worth.

What It's About

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is a short, fractured novel about Lizzie, who grows up in a sprawling suburb west of Toronto feeling wrong in her body long before anyone tells her she is. The book follows her from adolescence into adulthood, through friendships, dating, marriage, and a long, obsessive relationship with food, exercise, and the scale. It is less a conventional plot than a set of portraits, each one an angle on the same question of what she is worth.

The title borrows from Wallace Stevens' poem about a blackbird, and the structure does too: numbered sections, each a different lens, some scenes, some lists, some sharp little passages of self-address. Awad's sentences are quick and funny, with a mordant comic timing that makes the cruelty of Lizzie's inner voice hard to laugh off. The jokes keep arriving, and then they curdle.

Reading it feels like being pulled through a funhouse: uncomfortable, recognizable, occasionally hilarious, and often painful. It is not a diet guide or a redemption story, and it refuses easy catharsis. Readers who want a tidy arc and a clear lesson may find it frustrating, but readers who want an unsparing look at how appearance obsession eats into a life will find it bracing.

Read this if you…

want a darkly funny novel about body image and self-worth
are interested in satire of diet culture and women's expectations
enjoy experimental, fragmented fiction that rewards close attention

Skip it if you…

need a hopeful story with a clear recovery arc
find depictions of disordered eating or self-hatred too distressing right now

Key Ideas

1
Worth measured in pounds and almonds
Lizzie counts calories, miles, and pounds with a punishing precision that gradually crowds out everything else in her life. The book shows this logic from the inside, so the numbers feel less like a quirk and more like a religion she cannot leave. Awad makes the reader understand why the scale feels like the only honest judge in the room.
2
Praise that never quite lands
Compliments arrive from her mother, friends, and husband, but none of them reach the mirror. Each kind word becomes one more thing Lizzie has to manage, test, or doubt. The novel suggests that validation from others cannot repair a self-image built on constant comparison.
3
Form that mirrors a fractured self-image
Splitting the story into separate views lets Lizzie appear as both sharp observer and unreliable judge of herself. The shifting angles mimic how she sees her own body in pieces, never whole. The structure asks the reader to assemble a picture the narrator refuses to hold steady.
4
Satire aimed at a culture, not one woman
Awad targets diet culture, beauty expectations, online dating, and the quiet bargains women are taught to make with their appearance. Humor works as a weapon here, exposing how normal these demands look when stated plainly. Lizzie's suffering is presented as a symptom of a wider system that rewards self-erasure.

Limitations

Some readers find the fragmented structure disorienting, and the supporting cast is sketched more than fully developed. The focus is narrow: a single narrator's experience of weight and desirability, set in a particular suburban, middle-class world, so the critique can feel more like a sustained mood than a broad argument. Its bleakness is deliberate, but it can wear on readers who want more warmth or variety of perspective.

Questions Readers Ask

Is 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl about an eating disorder?: It deals closely with disordered eating, compulsive exercise, and self-hatred, but it is better described as a novel about body image obsession and the culture that feeds it. Lizzie's relationship with food and weight is central, yet the book is also about friendship, desire, and how others judge women. Readers sensitive to these themes should approach it with care.
How does it compare to Bunny, Awad's later novel?: Bunny is more overtly surreal and set in an MFA program, leaning into dark fantasy and campus satire. 13 Ways is more grounded and realistic, with a sharper focus on one woman's inner life. Readers who like Awad's humor and unsettling tone will find both books rewarding, but this debut is the more intimate of the two.

Published: 2016
ISBN: 9780143128489
Difficulty: beginner
Category: Fiction

Book details and cover from Google Books.

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