Fattypuffs and Thinifers

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It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. I would also check out: How to Live Forever (though that is more for 2-6 years) by Colin Thompson, The House That Sailed Away by Pat Hutchins and The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster(all of which I have also reviewed). Sadly there are no jokes about lean manufacturing, but the old line about generals always preparing to re-fight the last war is deployed in a kind of Maginot line situation the full figures of the Fattypuffs mean they cannot swiftly get out from their special curved trenches, but as can be the case defeat in war allows for victory in defeat.

Illustrated beautifully by Jean Bruller, this brilliantly witty (and highly ironic) parable about a war between fat people and thin people was not lost on me--even as a child. The quality of writing and plot are sufficient to warrent a wide adult readership as well, and, like all classics, it will never go out of date. On this basis Maurois can be credited with predicting that there would be a new war and that France would be occupied by Germany; he can also be credited with predicting that there would be ultimately a reconciliation and an end to the prolonged enmity between these two countries - even if the actual EU falls a bit short of the complete unification in the story's happy ending.

There is a timelessness about this book that everyone would do well to familiarise themselves with, I think. Millar, "Literary and Journalistic Predictions of the Second World War in the 1920s and 1930s" in Margaret Cassiof, Round-Up of Critical Essays in 20th Century History and Literature.

The Fattypuffs live lives of leisure and love eating and relaxing where the Thinifers love exercise and eating little. I came across it at school, perhaps it sticks in the mind because of how thorough going the fantasy is. Perhaps there is a wish fulfilment element here in the final ability of both sides to appreciate what the other has to offer and in the mutual deconstruction of prejudices. I felt it did a very good job of showing how some things such as size discrimination can be so silly.To The Times Literary Supplement on 27 December 1941, 'This most amusing fantasy' won pride of place in a review of many juveniles, but purely as comedy. A Gulliver's Travels for the younger mind, certainly took a few decades off me when I read it again ! The actual book, I hasten to add, is considerably less earnest than my review and has amusing illustrations.