Fat Girl, Terrestrial: A Novel
Wallis Armstrong, woman giant extraordinaire, creates miniature reproductions of crime scenes for a living and longs to shrink her own body down to such minuscule proportions. Wallis may be a Goliath in a standardized world, but her little brother, Obie, believes she is God and worships her with patience, love, and adoration. Then Obie becomes the latest victim in a string of child disappearances from their hometown, Kingdom Come, Kansas, and Wallis begins a life of solving crimes in miniature. Far from a mere mystery, though, Wells’ second novel (after Skin, 2006) is a fractured narrative, set partly in the present and partly in flashbacks, that gives way to surreal retellings of a wide range of faith traditions and asks relevant questions about the nature of religion and belief. The prose is elegant, employing elements of the absurd and of wordplay reminiscent of the work of Georges Perec (W; or, The Memory of Childhood, 1988). Reverent in its irreverence, Fat Girl, Terrestrial is a conversation about God and religion that invites careful reading and serious consideration. --Cortney Ophoff