Fat

Rob Grant''s new novel is a revelation. After INCOMPETENCE we would all have expected a killingly funny satire. And in its satire of our obsession with body image, of how the media makes us what we are FAT is certainly that.

But in its depiction of Grenville, a fat man at his wits end with the need to be thin; of Hayleigh, a teenage girl obsessed with her terror of being fat and of Jeremy, the self-absorbed, self-adoring ''conceptualist'' employed to promote the government''s new ''Fat Farms'' Rob Grant has given us, yes a very, very funny book, but also an immensely moving and personal novel about how we all feel about our bodies.

As Grenville deals with the humilation and daily indignity of being fat, as Hayleigh struggles to deal with her anorexia and as Jeremy comes to terms with the dangerous lies at the centre of the government''s new health regime FAT takes us on a hilarious and thought-provoking journey through our all-consuming obession with fat.

This is a hilariously moving, movingly hilarious novel and marks a massive step-change in Rob Grant''s growth as a writer. Here is a hugely commerical new voice in mainstream, high concept, high in poly-saturates, commercial fiction. It''s also safe to say that with this new novel, he''s writing about what he knows ...