Streaming on HULU soon, the TV show “My Mad Fat Diary” is already a sensation in the UK and has developing a cult following in the US. Releasing just in time for the show’s US appearance, fans can go back to where it all started in the original diaries with MY MAD FAT DIARY by Rae Earl (St. Martin’s Griffen; April 19, 2016). Rae Earl’s true diary took off in book form in the UK and was later developed into the popular series on UK’s E4. Written in a quirky, readable style similar to Rainbow Rowell’s work, Rae Earl draws the reader back to her teenage years, as she struggled with her weight, boys, and friends.
It’s 1989 and Rae Earl is a fat, boy-mad 17-year-old girl, living in Stamford, Lincolnshire with her mum and their deaf white cat in a council house with a mint green bathroom and a refrigerator Rae can’t keep away from. She’s also just been released from a psychiatric ward. MY MAD FAT DIARY is the hilarious, harrowing and touching real-life diary Rae kept during that fateful year. Surrounded by people like her constantly dieting mum, her beautiful frenemy Bethany, her mates from the private school up the road (called “Haddock,” Battered Sausage” and “Fig”) and the handsome unattainable boys Rae pines after (who often end up with Bethany…), MY MAD FAT DIARY is the story of an overweight young woman just hoping to be loved at a time when slim pop singers ruled the world.
Rae’s chronicle of her world will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever been a confused, lonely teenager clashing with her parents, sometimes overeating, hating her body, always taking herself VERY seriously, never knowing how positively brilliant she is and keeping a diary to record it all. MY MAD FAT DIARY – 365 days with one of the wisest and funniest girls in England.
Filled with 80’s throwbacks, MY MAD FAT DIARY will take you back in time to the age of seventeen, when no one felt truly comfortable in their skin. This delightful memoir has already claimed fans in Rainbow Rowell and Kevin McHale, and American audiences will eat up Rae’s charm!
About the Author: Rae Earl was born in Lincolnshire in 1971. She went to Hull University and worked in broadcasting. She now writes full time from her shed in Hobart, Tasmania.
Praise for MY MAD FAT DIARY
“With morbid, salty vigor – and plenty of side scribbles and cartoons – Earl described fights with her single mom, rampant horniness, eating disorders, and the OCD and self-harm that landed her in treatment. The TV show updates her story, and her soundtrack, to the mid-nineties, but it maintains the aggression of the original, as well as its frank and funny treatment of Rae’s sexuality.” – The New Yorker
Jennifer Mary G 