Dietland by Sarai Walker has become a TV series that is getting a fair amount of hype on the interwebs – at least from what my Twitter feed tells me, but that could also be due to the people that I follow on there.
Dietland follows a woman Plum, a fat woman who is insecure in her own body, who lacks any confidence in herself and is a recluse because of it. However she finds herself being followed by a young woman who is keeping a close eye on her, almost stalker like in fact, but an actual conversation between the two is a life changing moment for Plum, who ends up going through a whole ordeal to figure out exactly who she is as a person, what does she want from herself and her life, and why should she be listening to societies demands on her body when she is fine as she is? Of course while this story line is playing, there is another story line that’s an undercurrent, one that is striking and is written so well that is just so impressive.
I will say that although I really enjoyed the book, I did feel like the ending was a bit too… I guess heavy handed? Reading the book, reading about Plum’s life and then the organisation called Jennifer, I felt like this could have been fleshed out more into two books, that more information could have been given out not just about Plum, but the other women that she becomes friends with, as well as the organisation called Jennifer. It felt like what Plum went through was over by the end of the book, in the space of a few months, and while the healing process would take longer, it felt a little too quick, a bit too unreal and granted it’s a novel, it’s fiction so it won’t be real. It just feels like, it brought so many topics to a point, and having the main character deal with those points, yet to have those points almost resolved by the end of the book and again in a short period of time just doesn’t ring right with me for the rest that the novel depicts.
Plum is a woman though that I do enjoy reading about, I care about her and to an extent I understand her, both of us are fat women, both of us lack a lot of confidence and we just want the world to not see us. It’s so nice to read about a fat woman who isn’t confident in her body, who is scared about the clothes that she wears, who isn’t large and fabulous and has a load of friends to call upon. It’s nice to read about someone who is like me.
Due to this book being about diets, it’s not going to be for everyone, there is also some talk about sexual assault and a scene of assault in it too, so if any of them are triggers for you avoid the book. I think the TV show already has a few reviewers who also state trigger warnings, but usually the TV show and the book differ in certain ways.
The Pen and the Book 