Lori Lansens made a name for herself in popular fiction with her novel The Girls, about conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen. Lansens has again chosen an unusual protagonist. Mary Gooch, at 43, is morbidly obese and has always lived in the rural Canadian town of Leaford. She has the same job as a pharmacy assistant that she had at high school; she doesn’t read the newspaper or use a computer or a mobile phone. She has always been known as a ‘fat girl’ and endured the scorn of others and the resultant self-hatred.

Another staple of her life has been her husband, Jimmy Gooch. We meet Mary on the eve of her twenty-fifth (silver) wedding anniversary. However, Jimmy does not return home. Without her constant companion, Mary must negotiate a world that has moved beyond her.

Lansens tells Mary’s story with humour and empathy, and both Mary and the reader take a journey that becomes not so much about finding Jimmy Gooch, but finding Mary beyond the accumulated layers of fat and fear.