FAT BOY SWIM

For foodies and sports fans who can tolerate details of bullying. Fourteen-year-old Jimmy is berated throughout his Glasgow community for being fat. He’s scorned by strangers, taunted by coaches, and punched by peers. When one of the taunting coaches takes him in hand and teaches him to swim, though, Jimmy’s life begins to turn around. He’s already a brilliant cook, but this skill has been kept secret; now that he can swim, he grows in confidence, shrinks in size, “comes out” as a chef, and has a tender romance with a girl who makes him melt. He’s also better equipped to handle emerging family secrets. It’s too bad that Forde’s voice joins the bullies’ in painting Jimmy’s size as fascinatingly repulsive with terms like “clammy flesh-mound”; such unfriendly narrative description lessens Jimmy’s personhood and his cheer-worthy victories. Otherwise, warm and full of vivid imagery. (Fiction. 10-14)