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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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STRANGER HERE

Jen Larsen

How Weight Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed Up My Head

A deeply intelligent and uniquely qualified perspective on weight loss told with hilarity, poignancy, and razor-sharp wit.
Jen Larsen isn’t just a woman who underwent weight loss surgery (in 2006, she weighed 316 lbs before undergoing a procedure called the duodenal switch), she is a gifted WRITER who did — and she has captured the whole experience in a way that will speak to women and men, young, old, fat, thin.
She expands and renews the familiar up-and-down story of weight loss in the drama of such an incredible, dizzying swing from a terribly high weight to a startlingly low one in a brief snatch of time, tells the truth unflinchingly but with humor, and gives it depth and resonance. Like any great personal story, including THE LIAR’S CLUB, RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, and AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE, STRANGER HERE pulls you in, keeps you turning the pages, makes you care desperately about the person, and remains indelibly in your mind when you finish.
STRANGER HERE emphasizes the very un-pretty truth that there are no easy conclusions. It does not start with an epiphany and end with a happily ever after of eating salads and mall walking. It is a work with a core of deep emotion and thoughtful discussion filled with grace and humor and honesty, and a personal approach that deliberately shies away from prescribing solutions to a reader’s potential problems. Jen writes about weight loss and the hunt for self-acceptance the way Caroline Knapp writes about the horrible pleasures of anorexia, of needing, of craving, in APPETITES. And her prose is just as gorgeous.

Jen Larsen lives on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. For two years she was the featured blogger on Condé Nast's Elastic Waist, where her columns about her struggles with weight loss surgery were consistently the most popular content on the site. Her columns have also been syndicated on Yahoo!'s Shine Network for Women. She is a “collaborator” at Big Fat Deal, a blog that focuses on the portrayal of weight in media and popular culture and which has been featured on CBS News Healthwatch, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, ABC.com and other major news outlets. An essay about her complicated relationship with food and the aftermath of weight loss surgery is forthcoming in the collection THE DISH: MAKING THE FOOD THAT MAKES YOUR FAMILY, featuring Neal Pollack, Frank Bruni, and Melissa Clark (Shambhala 2012). She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of San Francisco.
Available products
Book

Published 2013-03-01 by Seal Press

Book

Published 2013-03-01 by Seal Press

Comments

“Jen's talent to match the right words to complicated, dark, often unspeakable feelings brings a smart, kind, and charming voice to the struggle every woman experiences to be okay with herself—body, mind, and spirit. As a result, Jen has won tens of thousands of friends and fans who feel that she knows them—and that they know her—on a level that strikes to the heart of what it means to be a woman with foibles and quirks in a world overridden with false images of perfection. It's Jen's very realness and self-deprecating charm that consistently made her daily personal blog on Elastic Waist the most popular content for nearly two years."

“Jen Larsen holds a mirror up to herself and shines a hard light of examination into the darkest crevices. You might not like what you see, but you will be the better for it. After reading her words you will find yourself in tears, though you won't know if it's from laughing or crying. I steal from Jen shamelessly, as I do from all my favorite authors. I have no doubt STRANGER HERE will become the definitive memoir for weight-loss surgery. It will be a boon to all those who are considering the surgery and a comfort for those who have already gone under the knife.”

Honest, brave and sparklingly funny, Larsen’s memoir reminds us that one size doesn’t—and shouldn’t—fit all.

“I've read more writing—both online and off—about fat, food, and body issues than most people, and Jen Larsen has always (always!) stood out as having one of the sharpest, most articulate, and funniest voices around. She has the cadence and wit of an unmistakably gifted writer and the ability to express difficult truths with terrific humor and style. In a time when questions about fat, health, surgery, relationships with food, body image, and identity are becoming increasingly complicated, Larsen's story brings a deeply intelligent and uniquely qualified perspective to the conversation. I really think STRANGER HERE will be the brightest and most memorable contribution to the body memoir genre in recent years.”

An arresting memoir about the author’s experience with weight–loss surgery....Raw vulnerability and rigorous emotional honesty make this weight–loss memoir compelling and memorable.