Dad Is Fat by Jim GaffiganReviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
After recently reading Jim Gaffigan's gastronomically good read Food: A Love Story, I decided to go on a mini Gaffigan binge.
As you might guess from the title, Dad Is Fat is about Gaffigan's home life and the travails of becoming a parent. It follows chronologically from him and his wife as a free-and-easy, no-kids couple to having five children all crammed into a tiny apartment.
I related to the no-kids couple, I laughed at some of the parenthood ridiculousness and I enjoyed every part of this book. I just didn't love it. I hoped for hilarity, but got more subtle ha-has instead.
Here's a sampling:
“Whenever one of my children says, 'Goodnight, Daddy,' I always think to myself, 'You don't mean that.”
“I used to wonder why I had hair on my legs, but now I know it's for my toddler sons and daughters to pull themselves up off the ground with as I scream in pain.”
“Look, you lost a tooth. Congratulations. Enjoy looking like a hillbilly. Here’s a dollar...”
“I don't know what's more exhausting about parenting: the getting up early, or acting like you know what you're doing.”
Yeah, there are a lot of one-liners. He is a stand-up comedian after all. However, Gaffigan does a nice job of setting up and exploring his topic, at least a little better than just tossing off zingers. No, this won't replace the What To Expect... series for folks looking to bone up on childrearing, but did you really think that's what you'd find between the pages of a book with this title?
Rating: 3.5
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