“Fatulous” by Heather Ream

Fatulous by Heather Ream is the sequel to her first memoir, Lunch Ladies Bought My Prom Dress. In this book, we are introduced to Heather when she is a freshman in college, and we follow her through her experiences for several years until she finally graduates.

If you were a victim of, or want to better understand someone who has, any or all of the following issues—poverty, weight, asthma, panic attacks, the self-esteem roller coaster—then you will heartily identify with Heather as she tells this part of her story. Of all the problems that beset Heather and her family, poverty was at the base level and most of the rest, or possible solutions to the rest, of them would have been eased with some financial security:

“It took remarkable patience to make do with scraps of nothing, to whittle down your needs and wants to the leanest of sinew, the tiniest sips of water in the middle of a desert. And when better times did arrive, you had to be careful not to flood yourself with too much pleasure and security at once. If you did, the hard desert pan in your heart that made survival possible would be too dry to absorb enough to grow roots.”

On the plus side for Heather, she has very strong ties to her family, a dogged determination, her own version of faith, and humor:

“Plus the Bible taught that while he (Jesus) was fully God, he was fully human, too, and loved to spend time with people. I appreciated a deity who likely had bunions from years spent in sandals and inevitably laughed at fart jokes, because no one who traveled with twelve other dudes escaped without hearing a few rips on the way to Jerusalem.”

Were this book fiction instead of memoir, it could almost be a comedy because it adheres to the Murphy’s Law adage, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Just when it seems like things can’t get worse, they usually do, but then Heather pulls something from deep inside her will to survive and bounces back like a super ball. The stories of her forays into the dating world alone will have readers alternating between laughter and tears.

Heather Ream

That Heather can so effectively pull herself up by her bootstraps time after time after time, attests to the fact that she possesses amazing resilience. Not only has she bared her soul and talked about her life out loud, but also she did it in two books that she wrote and got published.

What makes this book appealing is Heather’s enormous self-deprecating sense of humor, and an unassailable ability to tell her story highlighted by the great love and hope she has held in her heart despite the odds.