Fat Girls and Paper People

 Literary Love Songs and Lullabies


Nick Petrulakis

WHAT IS "THE PEOPLE OF PAPER"? It’s a stunning debut novel. What is The People of Paper? It’s part fairy tale, part allegory, part raw autobiography fancied up with honey. What is The People of Paper? It’s Salvador Plascencia’s literary love song to the written page. Plascencia experiments with everything: typography, font, narrative and text. In his masterful hands, these experiments are not mere cosmetic frills, and they contribute not only to the visual aesthetics of the page, but to the very survival of the story. Set in the town of El Monte among a gang of carnation pickers, Plascencia conjures up a bibliophile’s fantasy where girls self-medicate with bee-stings and lime, men attempt to stall sadness with paper cuts and fire and the vicious gang of EMF (El Monte Flores) wages a war against omniscient narration.
    Likened to both Borges and García Márquez, authors who, like Plascencia, make you hear their written words, The People of Paper is a breathtaking achievement in visual and verbal stimulation.
The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia (McSweeney’s Books) 200 pp. $22.00

    BERKELEY’S THACHER HURD HAS one of the best pedigrees of any children’s author. His mother, Edith Thacher Hurd, wrote the delightful “Johnny Lion” books, and his father, Clement Hurd, illustrated countless classics, including the industry standard by which all bedtime books are judged—Goodnight Moon.
    With Sleepy Cadillac:  A Bedtime Drive, Hurd has brought to the finish line his own bedtime story that will delight a new generation of sleepyheads.
    The first thing the reader notices are the tones Hurd has chosen to color his story. The night sky glows deep red, merging into rich purple. The Cadillac that arrives to take a nameless boy on a nighttime trip is indeed painted a sleepy blue. Over it all glows a soft, yellow moon. By story’s end, after the Caddy has fueled up at the dream station, drifted through fog, after other sleepy cars have circled that yellow moon until little heads nod, your little one will be ready to sleep, which is the true measure of success for the best bedtime books.
Sleepy Cadillac: A Bedtime Drive by Thacher Hurd (Harper Collins 2005) 32 pp. $15.99
   
    IF YOU WANT TO READ A BOOK that’s like a cold drink tossed in your face, Fat Girl is the right choice. It’s Judith Moore’s follow-up to her earlier memoir, the brilliantly funny Never Eat Your Heart Out. One wonders if, when Moore moved to Berkeley and proceeded to teach herself how to write, she had any idea of what she was capable.
    Fat Girl is as bright and clever as Moore has ever been, but the book is also achingly lonesome. In unsentimental detail, Moore describes what it’s like to always be the fat kid. She shows us the mother who hates the fat girl, the mother who repeatedly threatens, belt in hand, “to cut the blood out of [her]”-—the threats that all too often precede action.
    The beauty of Moore’s book is that she never asks for pity, never whines. Her concern is to explore in unflinching terms the life of a fat girl. The result is courageous, fierce and not easily forgotten.
Fat Girl by Judith Moore
(Hudson Street Press) 208 pp. $21.95