The Joker

Description:

Doreen Markowitz is funny and fat; she’s not just fat, she is enormous. The reason is simple: she loves food and has done so ever since her Jewish childhood in Cape Town. As Doreen grows up, her parents strive to make her conform to their desired image of a daughter. She endures adolescent humiliation, charm school, specialists and every kind of diet, but nothing seems to spoil her appetite.

At last, love provides an answer. Doreen falls for her psychiatrist and the miracle is effected. She emerges convincingly slim and beautiful, but strangely subdued. Packed off to London with her deeper problems still unresolved, she scores a second conventional goal: a prosperous marriage to the sinister Geoffrey Bartholomew-Cooper. This, too, turns out to be a sham, and it is only when she discovers herself to be a stand-up comedian that the real Doreen finally emerges.

“Trailing clouds of glory from two previous novels … Shelley Weiner presents Doreen Markowitz, a podge with panache and the heroine of a book that demands to be bolted in a one-sitting binge.”
Sunday Telegraph

“Some good jokes … but, more importantly, there’s a deeply etched humanity, undiminished by Weiner’s somewhat surrealistic twists of plot.”
Jewish Chronicle