The Elephant in the Room Book Reviews

The Elephant in the Room by Tommy Tomlinson Book Summary

An NPR Best Book of the Year: This story of a man’s reckoning with his 460-pound body is “warm and funny and honest . . . genuinely unputdownable” (Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times–bestselling author of Romantic Comedy).

When he was almost fifty years old, journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he’d been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change.

In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight—and hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a Fitbit to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America’s “capital of food porn,” Tomlinson takes a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. He confronts these issues head-on and recounts the practical steps he has to take to lose weight by the end—in a memoir that will resonate with anyone who’s grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness.

“What could have been a wallow in memoir self-pity is raised to art by Tomlinson’s wit and prose.” —Rolling Stone

“Heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud . . . I could not turn the pages fast enough.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

“Inspirational . . . witty and punchy.” —The New York Times

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The Elephant in the Room (Tommy Tomlinson) Book Reviews 2024

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