Life in the Fat Lane (4B03)

Date: 23/01/2018

Title: Life in the Fat Lane

Author: Cherie Bennett

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Good morning everyone, I’m Regan from 4B.

Recently I was impressed by a book ‘ Life in the Fat Lane’. Lara is a beautiful girl, who has everything in her life. She is not only the ‘princess’ of her family but also the homecoming queen of her school. Unfortunately, she suffers from a disease that is called  “Axell-Crowne” syndrome, after she has won the homecoming queen. She starts to gain weight due to the disease and her friends  ignore her because of her increasing weight. She is not perfect now, hence her father does not care about her, he even tells her he has an affair with another woman.

To get a new start of her life, her family moves to another city. Her life becomes even more worse in her new school since she is teased by her classmates. Owing to her boredom, she goes to join piano class. She then makes new friends and they appreciate her inner beauty but not her beautiful face and thin body. Finally, she starts to lose weight and understands that a beautiful face and thin body is not the most important thing in the life.

My favourite character is Lara. She is a tough girl. Although she faces numerous difficulties, she does not give up and finally recovered from her illness. I am inspired by her for her strong personality and bravery. At the beginning, she is just like living in Heaven. After discovering the facade of her life, she falls from Heaven to Hell. If I were her, I would feel very upset.

People often ignore the inner beauty because they are affected by the handsome appearance of people. Lara’s classmates are this type of people who thinks that attractive appearance can make their life perfect. It is obvious that the mass media promotes this wrong message to people. Luckily, some people do not care about the look of others but appreciate the inner beauty in real life. I hope that people should be thoughtful and sensible in order to make the world become beautiful.

No one is perfect in life. Everyone has his own personality, strengths and weaknesses. We need to accept our own defects and overcome them. If you dream to be flawless, you will be devastated when you know the truth, like Lara’s mother.

Sometimes, we may face difficulties in our lives and make us feel hopeless. Nevertheless, there are other important things in our lives to help us overcome the difficulties. This is what the author tells us,  ‘Some of the future I could control, and some of it I couldn’t. And some days it would be all right, and some days it wouldn’t.’ This is true. After surmounting the obstacles, we will know that they are negligible.

Thank you!