Arthur Opp is fat. More than that — he’s morbidly obese. He weighs 550lb and lives alone in a Brooklyn townhouse. He can’t even get up the stairs. Ever since his academic career ended, after he fell in love with one of his students, he’s locked himself away, eating gross quantities of comfort food. He’s pretty much killing himself, you think. Then he gets a call from the woman he fell in love with all that time ago. The author, Liz Moore, takes us into Arthur’s world brilliantly — she exposes his shame and self-hatred, his struggle to walk, the clutter and filth he lives in. And now he wants to get going again. But he’s too fat to clean his house.
