The Flawless Skin of Ugly People: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Doug Crandell
Publisher: Virgin Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $11.21
You Save: $3.74 (25%)
New (40) Used (36) from $0.34
Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 537844
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0753512998
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780753512999
ASIN: 0753512998
Publication Date: September 18, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Promotion: Save $10.00 when you spend $50.00 or more on Qualifying Items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout. Terms and Conditions
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Thanks to Ugly Betty, America is finally ready to read a love story about a couple who isn’t sleek, slick, tucked, pulled, or plastic.
Do we have to be beautiful to be loved? Hobbie—this novel’s darkly romantic hero—has been banished to homely man exile in the North Georgia Mountains, where his enemies are mirrors and bears. Things are not going well for Hobbie. His skin? Pizza Face, super-sized, with extra pepperoni and pitted olives. Job status? Former bank teller. Love life? His common-law wife Kari has gone AWOL at a weight-loss clinic in North Carolina.
But just as it seems Hobbie is doomed to go through life as a sweet, self-pitying “anonymous joke,” he jumps out of his skin and becomes downright heroic.
Can Hobbie rescue Kari from the weight-loss clinic? Can he pull his fractured family together? Plastic surgery—will he or won’t he? Will love endure if Hobbie’s skin clears up, Kari drops pounds, and ugly people become flawless? Readers won’t be able to put the book down until they find out.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 The Flawless (and Fixable) Skin of Ugly People (Who Just Need To Lose Some Weight) October 15, 2008
More of a novelette than a novel (a mere 224 pages), The Flawless Skin of Ugly People is an interesting book. The publish touts it as a love story between two flawed people, saying, "Thanks to Ugly Betty, America is finally ready to read a love story about a couple who isn't sleek, slick, tucked, pulled, or plastic."
In one sense, this is true. Both of the main characters -- and the majority of the supporting ones -- are deeply flawed, thoroughly imperfect, and not very pretty. The publisher's description, however, suggests that The Flawless Skin of Ugly People will be a story in which skin-deep beauty (or lack thereof) isn't an issue.
The Flawless Skin of Ugly People is entirely about the surface. Getting fat, getting thin, popping zits. It's emphasized repeatedly that these imperfections do not make the characters unlovable (sometimes these flaws are even wholly loved in and of themselves), but it's always present that these flaws are just that: flaws. All the characters have other issues as well, and it's clear that simply getting clearer skin or losing half their weight won't solve all their problems, but the readers also know that it sure couldn't hurt.
By the end of the book, everyone's accepted themselves and is working on getting pretty. The message is clear: fixing the inside will let you fix the outside and then you can be perfect through and through.
This stands in stark contrast to the 'Ugly Betty' motto: love yourself. Love your fat, love your zits, love your big bush eyebrows. They're not flaws, they're just WHO YOU ARE.
The Flawless Skin of Ugly People wasn't a terrible story, actually. It was engaging and moved quickly. However, the publisher's description (which is the one on the back of the book) is thoroughly misleading. If you're looking for a book about imperfect people in an imperfect world learning to love themselves, you're better off passing this one by.
 Unflinchingly Ugly February 14, 2008
The Flawless Skin of Ugly People is a most unusual tale of love and family. Hobbie has lived with grotesque facial acne since he was a teen. His common-law wife, Kari, is grossly overweight and has shut herself in a fat farm, decreeing that he is to have no contact with her beyond the daily letters she sends him.
The harder he tries to be alone, however, the more his life seems to trip him up, and soon he's off trying to find Kari in the company of a new makeshift family: his father-in-law Roth, Roth's ex-wife Sally, and Sally's (ex-?)boyfriend Donny.
There are parts of this book that make it quite difficult to read. Hobbie's stress-relieving `facial' is nothing short of grotesque, and the molestation that scars his and Kari's teenage years is depicted starkly and unflinchingly. There's something uplifting, however, about seeing such messed-up and normal people work their way through difficulties and become stronger for it. There are no falsely beautiful people in here, either inside OR out--just real people, going through real things and trying to find real compromises and answers.
 Didn't quite live up to expectations February 10, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
There is a lot to like in this novel. The people Crandell writes about are, really, "normal" people. They are people just like you and me, who have insecurities and who do not look perfectly airbrushed, as if they've just stepped from the pages of a magazine. This makes them far more believable as characters than those you find in many other works of literature. Still, there is a great deal of literature out there that also deals with "misfit" characters and that does so better than Crandell's book. It's not a bad book but it could use some work.
While I liked Hobbie, I also found him too self-pitying at times. I certainly don't think that the books portrayal of a person with his condition is all that unrealistic but it did bother me that Hobbie used his acne as a crutch. Still, the book did do a good job of showing how human natures leads us to sometimes resist the changes that, while tough, could actually make a profound difference in life because humans tend to favor the familiar over the scary unknown. I think Hobbie is exactly this type of character, a man who knows there are other possibilities but who is more comfortable with remaining in his niche than he is with taking a chance.
The character I liked least in this novel was Kari. I could certainly see why Hobbie was initially attracted to her as she is one of the few people who saw who he was on the inside rather than allowing the superficial to prejudice her but she treats him very badly during the course of the novel. Not only that, she flees from her father as well and is not there when people truly need her and yet no one seems all that upset by this. Yes, Hobbie does feel angry with her from time to time but he is also quick to forgive.
The strongest aspect of this novel, though, is Hobbie's growth--and there is a lot of it. Even though I was sometimes exasperated with him, I did find him sympathetic and I wanted to see him succeed. His gradual transition is handled well and the understandings he reaches with other characters are touching. There is a very rewarding emotional payoff to seeing how characters come together, how they love one another both in spite of and because of their flaws.
I really wanted to like this book January 10, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
After reading the reviews on this novel, I was so excited to finally sit down and experience what everyone else seemed to get from it. It started out great. It drew me in and compelled me to care about him, his absent wife and, no surprise, his dog. Unfortunately as he introduced new characters, I found the dialog to be a bit unbelievable and I began to lose faith in the story.
It is a great story it is just not great writing.
First half great; second half, eh. January 4, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
In the beginning, I found the story interesting and the writing quite effective. I liked the narrator, Hobbie, and felt really bad for him. But as it went on, I found myself skimming the pages because the plot became frustrating. There were a bunch of obstacles that Hobbie ran into and it just got to be too much for me. I think the author is a great writer, but that the story meandered a bit.
|
|
|
|
