Butter

Butter
Erin Jade Lange
272 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Source: NetGalley
★★★★★

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

The book's description immediately caught my attention.  Obese high school student "Butter," weighs in at 423 pounds.  His days are pretty much the same, get up, eat a massive breakfast, go to school and sit alone to eat a massive lunch, got home, play the saxophone, have some dinner and chat with his crush online, who doesn't know who he is.  But when Butter makes the decision to commit suicide by eating himself to death online, suddenly his classmates are paying attention to him.  With some newfound popularity, Butter isn't sure whether he wants to go through with it after all, but if he doesn't will he still be popular?

Butter was such a fantastic novel and it didn't disappoint me one bit.  There have been novels about bullying in the past, but Butter takes it one step further and really captures that dynamic between the bullies and the bullied.  Butter is riveting, dynamic, and just so extremely significant in this day in age.

I really liked the way Erin Jade Lange wrote the character of Butter.  She really illustrated the relationship between emotions and eating - something a lot of people struggle with on a daily basis whether they're overweight or not.  There's so much discrimination against the obese these days, people fail to realize the obese are people, too.  That really came across in Butter.  Sure, Butter was massive, but he also had a sense of humor and he was a killer saxophone player.  There was so much more to Butter than just eating and being fat.

Above all, Butter just seemed realistic to me.  Thank the Lord I've never been 423 pounds, but I know what it's like to be teased and used.  I think there's a bit of Butter in each of us and that make him a very relatable character.  Anna and her friends also seemed realistic to me.  I can identify people I went to high school with who acted the exact same way about one thing or another.  As for the subject matter, unfortunately in our modern world is was also realistic; our youth are becoming more and more obese with every study that comes out; high schoolers are bullied and encouraged to kill themselves everyday.  Sadly, it wouldn't at all surprise to me to read in the paper at a teenager somewhere killed him/herself over the Internet.

But Butter isn't all doom and gloom!  As I mentioned before, Butter has a sense of humor and his interactions with the adults around him, from his high-school's band teacher to his doctor whom he sees very frequently, are all rather up-beat.  Butter is able to laugh at himself and with others, taking the edge off what would otherwise be a very heavy novel.

Five stars!  Butter is such a breakthrough novel.  It's an absolute must read.  Erin Jade Lange has the ability to tackle several serious subject without making the book feel heavy.  Butter was a delight to read and I'm looking forward to reading more by this author in the future.