Alcoholics, revolutionaries, drag queens, lovers (both faithful and unfaithful) and the titular fat artist are just some of the characters who inhabit this imaginative first collection of short stories from American novelist Benjamin Hale. From the story of the man who must do two jobs to keep his bank balance at zero because "if it went under he'd get zinged with all these Kafkaesque fees for not having any money", to the uncle who sprays his 16-year-old niece silver and then photographs her, or the driver paid "by the living squid", Hale depicts modern America in all its horror and glory through stories which are as innovative as they are insightful. At times his visceral, sensual language is reminiscent of Camus's writing on Algiers – in Mexico City, for example, "the smoke of burnt blood swirled in the blazing New World sun" – while the story of a mistress whose client dies unexpectedly in her arms is as honest and touching an account of love as any reader could wish for. A remarkable portrayal of an alternative America.
