The Fattest Man in America

A darkly comic fable about modern America In a small Texas town lives Mickey, weighing in at nearly a thousand pounds, who affectionately refers to himself as the King of Fat. Having outgrown the lift - and his job - as bellboy at the Ranelagh Grand Hotel, Mickey decides to make ends meet by becoming a tourist attraction. Initially, it's an amateur affair - people pay a little to look, a little more to touch or take a photograph - but when Mickey takes on a professional manager business begins to boom. Billboards go up along the highway, a cafeteria and giftshop are built alongside the house and recordings of Tibetan lamas chanting in the background add to the atmosphere. Mickey is a star. He's huge. Mickey is the Fattest Man in America. Yet as he becomes ever more famous Mickey begins to feel a profound unease. His life has become a celebration of the flesh - but what of the spirit? A meeting with Martha, a pen friend whose vast size has led to her own problems and sometimes unsettling ways of dealing with them, will change Mickey's life for ever. In his own darkly funny words, this is Mickey's journey towards a very American idea of heaven. "One cub reporter from a newspaper over Dakota way described me as a cross between a giant squid and a hippopotamus lying by a river."


Genre: Literary Fiction