Butterbabe: The True Story of a 40 Stone Outsider - Tapa blanda

"Rebecca Golden's Butterbabe describes a miserable childhood and a ballooning weight problem. At 32, Golden weighed 40 stone. She asked her sister whether she should risk gastric bypass surgery. "Hell yes," came the answer. "I don't want you to die." The cruelties of children - "the moose is on the loose!" - and the sheer difficulty of living with morbid obesity are painstakingly described, and Golden tells fine jokes, too" (Daily Mail)

"Most fatty memoirs shy away from explaining why the weight got there in the first place. Not this one. Rebecca Golden admits she "ate what I liked and wasn't athletic". Her sister was stick-thin and her mother has a penchant for vibrators and online sex with strangers. It's stirring stuff and the perfect appetite suppressant" (Evening Standard)

'The best thing about weighing 40 stone is eating whatever you want. You don't worry about gaining half a stone: you know it won't make a difference. You know that losing half a stone won't make a difference either.'

Rebecca Golden weighed just over 6lb at birth. By the time she graduated from high school she weighed almost 26 stone and a few years later she tipped the scales at over 40 stone. Although morbidly obese she never had high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes; she drove a car and worked and 'never became fused to a sofa'. But being so large meant there were things she simply couldn't do, like get up off the floor unaided and sit in booths in restaurants. Then, at the age of thirty-three, she took the difficult decision to have a gastric bypass, and lost over 15 stone.

Fusing the themes of body image, abusive family dynamics and the social consequences of being overweight, this astonishingly articulate and beautifully written memoir gives a unique and quirky insight into what it's like when your weight spirals out of control.