Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes has two prominent female characters, Jody Mueller and Sarah Byrnes, who initially seem too different to even exist on the same planet, let alone be friends (or more, in Jody's case) with the narrator, Eric. Until you realize that Jody and Sarah Byrnes are both victims of horrible emotional and physical abuse from the men in their lives (Jody's ex forced her to have an abortion, then manipulated her into thinking she should have kept it from happening; Sarah Byrnes's father... Hoo boy, I'm sure a novel could be written only about what he's done to her and be well over 200 pages long.), have weak and/or absent mothers, regard Ms. Lemry as the first rational adult they've ever met, and find love from someone they both thought was just an easy friend (Eric). No wonder they ended up friends in the epilogue.