What Would Your Talking Doll Say?
I'm halfway through a book by Lionel Shriver (a woman writer) called Big Brother. The gist of the story is about a woman who tells her brother he can come stay with her family. She hasn't actually seen him in a few years, and when she goes to pick him up at the airport, she's flabbergasted to realize that he has gained hundreds of pounds. He's hugely obese, almost unrecognizable. She brings him home, and conflict ensues as her type-A husband (a disciplined man who bikes for hours a day and only eats very healthy food) is beyond disgusted by the slovenliness of the brother--who does of course eat a lot, all of the bad food that the husband won't touch. While the story is about the huge size of the brother, and how it's hard not to see fatness as the embodiment of all that's bad (laziness, self-indulgence, lack of control), there's an interesting sub plot that circulates. For a living, the sister been very successful in producing these special dolls that...