My Father's Diet

by Adrian Nathan West

In a broken-down Middle American town, the disintegration of a struggling family – its ambitions and emotions worn thin – is laid bare through the cold eyes of its only son. While studying at the local community college to finish his degree, he works what his divorced parents deem to be menial jobs and tries to stay out of their way, keeping his pitiless observations about their lives to himself. He says nothing about his semi-estranged father’s doomed attempts to find meaning in strip-mall spirituality. He says nothing about his mother’s willingness to subjugate herself to men he deems unworthy. He says nothing about the anonymity and emptiness to which their social classes and places of birth seem to have condemned everyone he knows, robbing them of even the vocabulary to express their grievances. He says nothing about his own pity, disgust, compassion, tenderness, and love – and when his father enters a bodybuilding competition, he swallows his scorn and agrees to help.

Instantly relatable, impeccably realized, and grimly hilarious, My Father’s Diet is equal parts Kierkegaard, This Side of Paradise, and Pumping Iron: an autopsy of antiquated notions of manhood, and the perfect, bite-sized novel for a world always keen to mistake narcissism for introspection.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

176 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2022

About the author

Adrian Nathan West is the author of The Aesthetics of Degradation as well as the translator of numerous works of contemporary European literature. He lives between Spain and the United States with the cinema critic Beatriz Leal Riesco.

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of those random library finds that was slim enough to render itself worth checking out. The length is actually important here, because for how well it’s written, the story itself wouldn’t work had it been stretched out further…there’s not enough meat on these bones, which is kind of funny for a book with diet in its title.
The book isn’t about a diet, of course, it’s about a father/son relationship. The two have been estranged for a long time, but now with the son of college age the father comes back into the picture and the two strike up something like a friendship based relationship.
Surprisingly, it isn’t tinged with resentment for childhood abandonment nor does the father who is fairly well off tends to help out his barely getting by son. It’s much more of an even-footed situation.
The father is hitting the middle-age like a collision course dummy…all the way. New wife, new life, new business. And when some of it doesn’t pan out, he turns to a thing that appears easier to control – his body. Deciding to enter a bodybuilding competition, he begins a physical transformation that his mind and his body both resist. And his son sort of gets on the bandwagon, however bemusedly.
This novel doesn’t go for conventional trappings like likeable cast of palyers and traditional story arcs and it’s very cynical, so at well under 200 pages it lands just right as a character study of various aspects of masculinity, mainly flawed, and as a slice of life sort of tale.
I’m not sure if would work for everyone; for me there was enough here to enjoy – the writing itself mainly - to be worth the time.

[Oliver Smith]

A story about people in crises whose only support are other people in crises, and a sharply observed portrait of family dysfunction. Shot through with a partiuclar Midwestern malaise and set against the backdrop of fast food joints and strip malls, the narrator's lassitude reflected in the isolated stasis of his surroundings. West has a keen eye for detail and human idiosyncrasies, which, when filtered through the eyes of his observant, hyper-articulate but spiritually apathetic narrator, gives rise to a bleak, sardonic tone. This could easily lead to a novel that's depressing, overly cycnical or unnecessarily cruel, but West walks this line quite well. The cynicism is laced with a dry humour, the mockery doesn't tip over into outright cruelty (and, importantly, the narrator doesn't excuse himself from his own mildly derisive scrutiny) and while existential angst does permeate the book, West wisely stops short of going into full staring-into-the-abyss mode.

The eponymous diet is one example among many of a character reaching for something under the misguided belief that it will solve everything, or perhaps simply for the sake of manufacturing some direction. Failure runs through the novel, both in the typical sense and in the sense of failure by way of inaction, and as a reader we can see the inevitably of this failure as the characters attempt to repair the internal via the external, to remedy spiritual discord through material acquisition. There is grotesquerie here, but the novel isn't grotesque. This isn't satire. Kitsch, perhaps, but not unreal, and it's a kitsch world rendered in elegant, precise prose.

Listless but not depressing and humourous but not comical, My Father's Diet hits upon an all-too-relatable sense of time oozing away, simulataneously moving too quickly and too slowly, and of being a passenger in one's own life.

[LittleSophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I imagine David Sedaris would sound like, if he'd been an only child. Terrifyingly bleak and darkly funny picture of small town life in the midwest with all it's crushed aspirations. Elevated by the slim last bit of dignity West affords his characters and the stunningly beautiful prose. Who knew there was such beauty to be mined in the story of a middle aged man entering a scam competition for body building?

[Ezechiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slice of life story, not much happens, it’s not about that. It’s not even really about body building or a diet, it’s about broken people who do what they can to feel less broken. I thought this was very well written, and slow in a good way. It felts like looking at a post card of Midwestern, fly-over America in the 2000s. I really appreciated the hyperrealism of the descriptions, and I think it would make for a great indie movie about nothing - I personally love those. This quotes sums it up: “I woke up morose, thought of how each passing moment was unique, how we talk and think about this uniqueness often but do no honor to what it implies, because how?”. This book is a way to do honor to precisely that.

[Yasmina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slice of life. I understand it but I don't enjoy it.

[Ethan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is DONE. Honestly—pretty mid. This is very much “slice of life” prose. There isn’t really a plot—the bodybuilding only comes in more than halfway through the book and it doesn’t really resolve itself and is more of a subplot. If anything this is a story about the narrator, who reminds me of a Holden Caulfield type of person. The narrator has a really big ego lol. My whole thing here is that the author really wants to drive home how bad of a student he is, yet he uses such big words which doesn’t really make sense because why would he be using any of this language? Also, there is a LOT of detail in here which okay great I’m glad I know where the can of soda was placed, but there really could have been a lot more fleshing out of characters and their stories but that really wasn’t the case. The last page of the book seemingly functioned more as an ending paragraph of an essay as opposed to something the narrator would say and it took me out of it.

This was fine but not particularly interesting and it was a lot of words that didn’t really feel like it went anywhere. The narrator’s stepfather (who only shows up in two separate chapters) was the only character that seemed to develop any sort of growth and this could also be a result of the bias of our egotistical potentially unreliable narrator.

I guess I’m glad he learned more about his father because I can see a little bit of myself in that but I think the ways I learned about my father were much more profound and humanizing as opposed to the narrator’s superficial and often self-centered observations.

Overall IDK I am glad I got myself through this book but TBH I don’t have many strong feelings. It happened and it’s done and now I move on.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is about a non glamorous class of people who are not usually the focus of a novel. These are people who are not content with their lives and seek to advance themselves through superficial pursuits rather than deeper introspection and change. The narrator was trying to break the multigenerational cycle but had no role models to guide him. None of the characters was in true crisis but their crazy attempts at reinventing themselves was funny when it wasn’t just sad. The author wrote with enough compassion to make his characters losers yet not caricatures of lost souls. This is written with detailed descriptions that didn’t add to plot but to ennui, depicting blah drab environment and lives. There is a message in the end but I’m not sure this will stay with me for long.

[Mark O'mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The quality of the writing kept me at this short novel. Some talent here for sure. I’m not motivated to add much more, probably on account of the depressing nature of the characters and settings. The novel captures something worthwhile, but I can’t be bothered trying to find the words to articulate.

[Ashley Valanzola · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an adventure this book was. I hate that I laughed at the grotesque recollections of mediocre American life, primarily because there were anecdotes to which I could relate.
West's prose was incredibly sophisticated, which became all the more impressive when he described the banality of everyday life. I still don't know quite what to make of the book, but I'm glad I read it.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review soon.

[Hugo Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty readable & entertaining but probably nothing special ?? ..

[Dan Squire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a bit of a random find in the bookstore, but I'm glad I picked it up – it promised from the blurb to be exactly the kind of weird/hilarious plot-line that usually appeals to me.

It definitely captures the grotesque, depressing nature of life in soulless American suburbia. There are some gross moments and some very funny moments throughout, and the writing is solid with a few descriptive gems thrown in for good measure (bodybuilders with gel-hardened hair like the fins of dried fish, for example).

I couldn't give it five stars because I felt it didn't quite lean in hard enough to either the humour or the sadness of the subject matter. The novel treads a fine line between the two – but it felt like there were some missed opportunities for either laugh-out-loud moments or cringeworthy character decisions.

[Sloane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a bleak novel. West disembowels the cultural and social values of 1990s US suburbia, an act meant to reinforce the hollowness of a lifestyle that flickers between identical new builds and interchangeable box stores and strip malls. His indictment is simultaneously accurate and lacking in compassion.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The writing style is clear and sparse, with a sad tenderness to it. It’s a nuanced study of a small cast of characters that steers clear of cliche. I reckon I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

[Cyanne Demchak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was surprisingly good. I don’t read many male authors and certainly not many coming of age stories. This was a unique look at a dysfunctional family, that was weird and slightly delightful in its mundaneness.

[Morgan Henley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the book really slow in the beginning and some of the vocabulary made me roll my eyes. It picks up in the second half and the feeling of suburban America washes over you in a sensory way. Interesting, but not sure who I would ever recommend this to.

[Drew Praskovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

America’s mundanity. The dull existential crisis that emerged from the lack of a true cultural identity and the hollowness that leads us astray.

Satirical and wry. Does feel like it is missing two chapters at the end but lots to love here. Would make a great low budget indie

[Selmita Finne · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s like Don deLillo if he was a bitter quasi-intellectual

[Emily Carlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

overwritten. also rly bleak and cynical and judgmental and mean feeling. maybe that was the point but this simply did NOT do it for me.

[Ben Brackett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scorching spoke to how American's try to fill their emptiness. The last line of the book is haunting.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Needed a firmer ending- formlessness not justified here. I liked it though.

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's billed as "equal parts Kierkegaard, This Side of Paradise, and Pumping Iron," and it certainly fits that description. West makes you consider social class and finding meaning in life through the unnamed narrator and his family's escapades, with his father's entry into a bodybuilding competition being providing some levity to the proceedings. For me personally though, the comparison to Pumping Iron worked against it--I find that movie fascinating and incredibly entertaining, and I can't say the same about this book. It's not bad, but if you're going to use Arnold Schwarzenegger as a point of comparison, you really have to go all out. I'm not sure if a lengthier tome would've helped with that, as the size of the book is one of the reasons I checked it out, and the story is close to bare bones and would need to bulk up to justify any additions. But all in all, it was a pleasurable read. Solid 3 stars.

[Alicia Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0.

My Father's Diet is a story about a college male narrator and his relationship with his twice-divorced dad. In the setting of mid-West America, the story has references to the plain-Jane suburbia from riding on Greyhounds to Karens (actually though, the narrator's stepmom's name is Karen) in strip malls.

The average setting may have bled over into the quality as the storyline was bland and presented matter-of-fact. Some of the passages I read I wondered why they were included into the book and what I was missing in connection to the story. For example, the entire chapter on the narrator's visit to his girlfriend (?) Fox was bizarre and had no relation to what happened to his father.

My Father's Diet reads like a friend who is spaced out and talks and loses their trail of thought, without realizing where exactly they were setting off to in the first place.

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have you ever been on a date where the guy starts out interesting and articulate and has anecdotes, but at some point you check your watch and realise he's been telling you the story of how his Dad entered a body building contest for 90 minutes and so far hasn't even approached the topic of body building contests? Now you're trapped at the table listening to a mediocre man monologue about his uninteresting life... the wine ran out a while ago, you can't get the waiter's attention, finally after three hours he gets to the end of his story, you pay the bill, and try to politely extricate yourself without triggering his childhood abandonment issues.

[Samantha Byres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, really glad I picked this up based on the cover and length. Anything from And Other Stories is generally interesting. Wonderfully and humorously observed, a young man in the middle of his own existential crisis watches his father flail in the wake of his divorce. Is change possible? What does it mean to protect an inner life in a country obsessed with externality? A great example of first person narrative that does a good job of obscuring the “I”.

[Drew Gummerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An apathetic narrator moves between parents, step-parents, school, and girlfriend in this deconstruction of the American dream. And beside from being quite brilliant it’s pleasing to see another dishwasher in literature. Fabulous.

[Elspeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Curious little book. Interesting male perspective on crisis / wavering. Interesting father-son relationship. Really fascinating insight into pocket of American culture. Clever hard to say if novel / autobiography. Entertaining.

[Emily Callahan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story of a boy that's just kind of living through all of his parents bullshit (which is so up my alley but I found this really all over the place and hard to get through at times). I was however very excited to see a reference to one of my favorite underrated wrestling tag teams, The Eliminators!

[K. Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this kinda randomly and enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I'm not from the South but I recognize a lot of the characters in this and I thought the prose was great. It's short enough that none of its quirks came to annoy me. Why are Dads all like this?

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. Sort of book I would have found interesting to read when I was much younger. Slice of American life, far from normal. But when you’ve been around a bit such things are less intriguing.