From Publishers Weekly
Reed (@expectations) rips into the dangerous pursuit of body perfection at the expense of the soul in this stinging and mordantly witty satire. In the too-near future (watch out, Dr. Phil!), the Reverend Earl, a godlike "guru of the good life," broadcasts from his Glass Cathedral, promoting the nirvana of the "Afterfat," which can only be achieved by following his bible's formula of relentless exercise, cosmetic interventions and use of his special dietary supplement. A cast of delicious characters, caught like insects in day-glo amber, features bewildered twin teens Betz and Danny Abercrombie. The brothers are searching for their anorexic sister Annie, who's been shipped off to a convent created by Earl for sinners with eating disorders and run by the very scary Dedicated Sisters. Their confused but well-meaning mom turns for help to an eccentric underground railroad of religious clerics of various denominations who would love to see Earl destroyed before he launches his next program, Solutions. In the rousing endgame, aging stockbroker Jeremy Devlin enters Earl's high-ticket desert spa to lose weight and discovers the dark heart at the core of Earl's empire. With this sharp-eyed look at America's obsession with image, Reed provides much food for thought and reaffirms her position as one of our brightest cultural commentators. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Imagine a not-so-distant future in which idolatry of everything youthful, perfect, and beautiful has become the only religion, and natural aging, with its spare-tire midriffs, cheesy thighs, and wrinkly faces, is a punishable sin. Such is the perfect setting for the megalomaniacal Reverend Earl to thrive and prosper. From coast to coast, Reverend Earl's luxury spa, Sylphania, is all the rage, and to it the overweight flock for personally supervised weight-loss programs and plenty of preaching on the heavenly state of the Afterfat. For troubled teens suffering with anorexia, bulimia, and overweight, there are the reverend's "convents," in which the "proper" ways to eat and think are taught, and to one of these her parents consign anorexic Annie. When her siblings discover she's gone, and the folks won't talk, they sense big trouble. They set off with Annie's boyfriend to find her and bring her home. Unlikely people, in particular an underground network of religions that recalls a time when gods, not flesh, were worshipped, help them. Reed's visionary tale is brilliant, though at times painful to read. Still, the main characters all come to realize their strengths, who they are, and what is really important. Paula Luedtke
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2004
"A nightmarish, tragicomic near-future where body image is the new religion... Unsettling, sometimes appalling: satire edging remorselessly toward reality."


Review
A nightmarish, tragicomic near-future where body image is the new religion. Unseettling, sometimes appalling: satire edging remorselessly toward reality.


Book Description
TV says it. Magazines say it. American society commands it. You must be thin. You must be young. Fad diets. Fat-purging pills. Fitness clubs. Liposuction. Breast implants. Steroids.

In the tomorrow of Thinner Than Thou, the cult of the body has become the one true religion. The Dedicated Sisters are a religious order sworn to help anorexic, bulimic, and morbidly obese youth. Throughout the land, houses of worship have been replaced by the health clubs of the Crossed Triceps. And through hypnotically powerful evangelical infomercials, the Reverend Earl preaches the heaven of the Afterfat, where you will look like a Greek god and eat anything you want. Just sign over your life savings and come to Sylphania, the most luxurious weight-loss spa in the world, where the Reverend himself will personally supervise your attainment of physical perfection.

But the glory of youth and thinness that America worships conceals a hidden world where teens train for the competitive eating circuit, where fat porn and obese strippers feed people's dark desires, and where an underground railroad of rebellious religions remember when people worshipped God instead of the Afterfat.

As Annie, an anorexic, and her friend Kelly, who is so massive she can barely walk, find out, the tender promises of the Dedicated Sisters are fulfilled by forced feedings and enforced starvation in hidden prisons.

As middle-aged Jeremy discovers, Sylphania is a concentration camp where failure to lose weight and tone up leads to brutal punishment.
The Rev. Earl's public sympathy for the overweight conceals a private contempt . . . and, beneath that, a terrible longing known only to a select few.

The inevitable decay of old age is the only thing keeping mankind from reaching perfection. Luckily, Reverend Earl has a plan that will take care of that . . . .



From the Author
Given the obscene concentration on body image, it's clear the country's in a fanatical fit of self-improvement of the most superficial kind, and doomed you are if you don't match the national Barbie/Ken template of beauty and fitness. In a "PW talks with Kit Reed" Publishers Weekly asks: PW: Reverend Earl's "Solutions" agenda sounds like Hitler's Final Solution. KR: Yes. Clearly what Hitler was doing was much more sophisticated and far more heinous, but the analogy isn't so far off. We may not be trying to create a master race, but we certainly are encouraging a cute one. Should we worry? Oooh, yes. Do we think we're a little too thin/too fat/too wrinkled to pass muster? Probably.


About the Author
Kit Reed has been a Guggenheim fellow and a Rockefeller Fellow at The Aspen Institute Her novel, Little Sisters of the Apocalypse, and a short story collection, Weird Women, Wired Women, were finalists for the James W. Tiptree Award. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award for short fiction. A novel, The Ballad of T. Rantula, was named to the American Library Association list of Best Books for Young Adults. Reed's short fiction has been published in The Yale Review, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Omni, and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature.

One of the most critically-acclaimed feminist science fiction writers, Kit Reed has been profiled in American Women Writers, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Who's Who In America. She works with fiction writers at Wesleyan University and lives in Connecticut.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Television says it. Magazines say it. American society commands it. You must be thin. You must be young. Fad diets. Fat-purging pills. Fitness clubs. Liposuction. Breast implants. Steroids." "In the tomorrow of Thinner Than Thou, the cult of the body has become one of true religion. The Dedicated Sisters are a religious order sworn to help anorexic, bulimic, and morbidly obese youth. Throughout the land, houses of worship have been replaced by the health clubs of the Crossed Triceps. In his evangelical infomercials, the Reverend Earl preaches the Heaven of the Afterfat, where you will look like a Greek god and can eat anything you want. Just sign over your life savings and come to Sylphania, the most luxurious weight-loss spa in the world, where the Reverend Earl himself will personally supervise your attainment of physical perfection." "But the glory of youth and thinness that America worships conceals a hidden world where teens train for the competitive-eating circuit, where fat porn and obese strippers feed people's dark desires, and where an underground railroad of rebellious religions remember when people worshiped God instead of the Afterfat." "As Annie, an anorexic, and her friend Kelly, who is so massive she can barely walk, find out, the tender promises of the Dedicated Sisters are fulfilled by forced feedings and enforced starvation in hidden prisons." "As middle-aged Jeremy discovers, Sylphania is a concentration camp where failure to lose weight and tone up leads to brutal punishment." "Reverend Earl's public sympathy for the overweight conceals a private contempt...and, beneath that, a terrible longing known only to a select few." The inevitable decay of old age is the only thing keeping mankind from reaching perfection. Luckily, Reverend Earl has a plan that will take care of that.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Reed (@expectations) rips into the dangerous pursuit of body perfection at the expense of the soul in this stinging and mordantly witty satire. In the too-near future (watch out, Dr. Phil!), the Reverend Earl, a godlike "guru of the good life," broadcasts from his Glass Cathedral, promoting the nirvana of the "Afterfat," which can only be achieved by following his bible's formula of relentless exercise, cosmetic interventions and use of his special dietary supplement. A cast of delicious characters, caught like insects in day-glo amber, features bewildered twin teens Betz and Danny Abercrombie. The brothers are searching for their anorexic sister Annie, who's been shipped off to a convent created by Earl for sinners with eating disorders and run by the very scary Dedicated Sisters. Their confused but well-meaning mom turns for help to an eccentric underground railroad of religious clerics of various denominations who would love to see Earl destroyed before he launches his next program, Solutions. In the rousing endgame, aging stockbroker Jeremy Devlin enters Earl's high-ticket desert spa to lose weight and discovers the dark heart at the core of Earl's empire. With this sharp-eyed look at America's obsession with image, Reed provides much food for thought and reaffirms her position as one of our brightest cultural commentators. Agent, Andrew Blauner at Blauner Books. (June 16) Forecast: Subtle jacket art of a place setting will help lure non-SF readers, as will a blurb from Ruth Striegel-Moore, co-author of Eating Disorders: Innovative Directions. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In a dystopian future in which the cult of the body has replaced religion, Annie has starved herself into a skeletal figure; her parents send her to a convent run by the Dedicated Sisters, who handle anorexics, bulimics, and other people with weight issues. Behind the fervor to find the perfect body is the Reverend Earl, an evangelist of the body's temple and a tyrant interested in power. The author of The Ballad of T. Rantula, Reed has mastered the atmosphere and dialog of the young people. A good choice for most sf collections. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews