Module 7 - Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

Summary  

 Sarah Byrnes and Eric "Moby" Calhoun have been each others only friends for many years due to their similar status of being an outcast.  Sarah Byrnes is outcast due to disfiguring burns on both her hands and her face.  Moby was outcast due to his weight.  In the book, it is there senior year, and Sarah Byrnes is in the mental ward of a hospital.  One day, she just stopped talking or reacting to anything.  Moby desperately wants to help her, so he visits her in between school and practicing for the school swim team.  As he delves deeper into her problem and it reasons, he puts himself in grave danger.  Moby has to also deal with a Mark Brittan, an extremely judgemental boy who uses Christianity as a way to condem everyone who does not share the same beliefs. 

 

Bibliography

 Crutcher, C.  (1993).  Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes.  New York, NY:  Harper Tempest.

 

My Impression

I thought that this was a very good book.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  I found Moby to be a very likeable, if sometimes too perfect, character.  I liked his loyalty to Sarah Byrnes and his determination to help her no matter what problems might arise from his endeavours.  As he was supposed to, Mark Brittan really made me angry at points.  I liked that I was able to get involved, emotionally, with the book.  Also, Elleby was a fantastic character.  I enjoyed his humor and loved his car.  While this book dealt with some serious topics, such as shame and abuse, it had enough humor to make it not be too heavy and too serious.  While reading it, there were several places where I literally laughed out loud. 

To Read or Not to Read:  Read it.  Read it.  Read it.  You won't regret it.

Professional Reviews

School Library Journal
"Gr 8 Up-- Best friends Eric (emerging from obesity) and Sarah Byrnes (horribly scarred from burns and caustically tough) save one another on many levels throughout this breathtakingly complex and harrowing story of emotional heroism and growth. Outstanding on so many levels, it speaks about abuse, loyalty, brutality, and hypocrisy, with some surprising saviors along the way. High school students everywhere, many of whom carry scars of some sort, will immediately relate." - Mary Hofmann
Hofmann, M. (2005, November).  [Review of the book Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes, by C. Crutcher].  School Library Journal, 51(11), 59.  Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/

Horn Book Magazine
"At eighteen Eric Calhoune is an overweight swimmer whose nickname is Moby, though he's not as fat as he used to be and would be even thinner were it not for his friendship with Sarah Byrnes. Eric's success on the swimming team and the weight loss that is the by-product of his strict physical regimen are so threatening to that longstanding relationship, however, that he forces himself into gluttony in order not to jeopardize it. The author has created one of his strongest female characters to date in the physically maimed Sarah Byrnes, who at the age of three was severely burned on the face and hands when her father pushed her into a wood stove. These two teenagers form a close bond based on much that they have in common. In addition to the "terminal uglies," they both have parents -- Sarah's mother and Eric's father -- who left their families, and they both have been granted a larger than normal allotment of intelligence and courage. They share a great deal of anger, too, repressed in Eric but smoldering and quick to surface in Sarah Byrnes. In their last year in high school, she has an apparent catatonic episode and is institutionalized. Eric's attempts to help his friend find her way back into the world make up the bulk of the narrative. Although the central issue of the novel is the insidious and far-reaching effects of child abuse, minor characters introduce several other topics of current interest, such as abortion and religious fundamentalism -- perhaps too superficially and a bit sensationally given the serious nature of these issues. As is usually the case in this author's novels, the book's strength lies in the characterizations. Crutcher possesses a novelist's greatest asset: an ability to create people who are real and believable and about whom the reader can care deeply."
N. V. (1993, May/June).  [Review of the book Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes, by C. Crutcher].  Horn Book Magazine, 69(3), 336.  Retrieved from http://hbook.com/.

Library Uses

• This book, along with a few others, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Speak and Brutal, could be used in a book talk dealing with books about either outcasts or teen violence.
•  This book could also be used in a book display of good YA in order to tempt young adults to read.

Image retrieved from:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/staying-fat-for-sarah-byrnes-chris-crutcher/1100616086?ean=9780060094898