Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

By Chris Crutcher

Published by Harper Tempest

Copyright © 1993

Is the world good or is the world bad? I guess it depends on who you ask and how far they look. For people like Sara Byrnes and Eric Calhoun it’s not always such a great place. Eric and Sarah Byrnes have been social misfits since they were young children; him fat and her terribly scarred. 

For Eric being on the high school swim team has helped him lose weight and become more accepted, but there is nothing Sarah can do about her scarred face and arms. Sarah Byrnes is still Eric’s best friend though, and now she is in the psychiatric ward of the hospital in what seems to be a catatonic state. The real puzzle is why she is there, and finding out can be the difference between life and death. Sarah Byrnes current emotional state and inability to trust anyone, even her best friend, makes it really hard to help her before time runs out.

While Eric is struggling to reach and help Sarah Byrnes, competition for supremacy of body and mind is heating up on the swim team and in his Contemporary American Thought class with Mark a fellow swimmer and student who is not quite stable.

The Author does a wonderful job of getting us into the minds of our main character, and through him helping us to understand the supporting characters and their backgrounds. He also tackles some hard subjects like religion, abortion, and suicide. A young adult novel obviously is not going to answer or solve these problems but it will cause adolescents to think critically about these issues. The mystery remains though, what happened to Sarah Byrnes and what is going to happen to her. It is definitely worth the read to find out.