As a psychologist and as someone who has lost loved ones to suicide, I was drawn to this book. I’m afraid I didn’t feel a connection to the characters, however. Nothing new or terribly insightful here, but overall an ok story.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review. Wow, this was powerful writing. I didn't want to keep reading but I couldn't put it down either. Terribly sad story. I'd definitely read another book by Rohan.

Special thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of THE WEIGHT OF HIM by Ethel Rohan.

The story is set in rural contemporary Ireland and I feel drawn to the picturesque countryside. (Hoping to visit Ireland someday.)

Micheal Brennan, age seventeen and eldest child of Billy and Tricia, cut down the clothesline and took his own life while his family was sleeping. They are now trying to cope. You can feel the tension in the home. Tricia has lost her appetite and has started smoking again. Billy, morbidly overweight and eating uncontrollably, is headed for an early death.

Billy visited his family doctor, and told him that he wanted to drop his weight and get fit and healthy. Dr. Shaw said, "...Your blood pressure is high, worrisome in fact, as is your overall condition. There is no easy way to put this, Billy, you're morbidly obese and on a very slippery slope. Headed straight for hypertension, diabetes, cardiopulmonary disease and you put shock and grief on top of all that...well, I don't have to spell it out."

'Billy left Shaw's office in a daze. He'd known, and yet it still came as a shock - he was a ticking bomb and if he wasn't careful, he was going to put his family through another premature funeral.'

'Now the torment of what he should have seen in his own son crawled in his head like maggots.'

'His whole life, he could always count on food. From his earliest memories, he'd loved food's colors, textures, and tastes. The way flavors went off in his mouth. How food distracted. Kept his mind still and his bad feelings quiet. Comforted. Pleasured. Sated. Filled him up. Made him feel in charge. A giant. Food made everything better.
At least it had made everything better.'

'Billy sat trembling with his idea. He could set a weight goal and people could pay him for every pound he lost. Or, like the walkathon, they could donate a flat amount. He rubbed at his mouth. Micheal's death had cut him in two, so he would set his weight loss goal at two hundred pounds. Half of himself. The money he raised would help save lives, in Micheal's memory.'

I sympathize with Billy and his family and their hurt, sorrow and guilt. My favourite characters are Billy and 12 year-old Anna. Despite opposition and disapproval from his family, Billy tries to carry out his plan to raise awareness of suicide and to help prevent suicides.
Will he succeed in raising lots of money for Suicide Prevention?
Will Billy be able to stay on his diet?
Will he lose the excess weight?
By going public will Billy widen the gap between him and his family?

I feel that Ethel Rohan did a fine job of bringing to the forefront two subjects that we have difficulty addressing - suicide and obesity.

Something ten-year-old Ivor said to Billy is my favourite quote from this book.

"We get reminders about dying, so we don't forget to make the most of living."

I enjoyed reading THE WEIGHT OF HIM and recommend reading this heartwarming story.
4****

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking book- but there's hope here too. I put off reading this (thanks to Netgalley for the ARC) because it just looked so potentially sad, and it was, but Rohan has created such a wonderful character in Billy and such a terrific cast in his town that it wasn't at all what I feared. It's a story of people banding together, despite the rotten stuff, to make things better. Billy's food issues are so relatable. The suicide of his son could have crushed him but it doesn't, it makes him stronger and determined to make a difference. THis is one I'm going to recommend to others. Two thumbs up!

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 14, 2017

The Weight of Him takes on two social issues: teen suicide and obesity. It doesn’t quite do justice to either of them, but the effort is sincere and well intended.

Billy and Tricia Brennan recently lost their 17-year-old son Michael to suicide. As Billy drifts through his days, awash in memories, he feels he is killing himself — “not nearly as swiftly or brutally as Michael, but killing himself just the same.”

Billy is morbidly obese (just topping 400 pounds) and finally feels a need to get serious about losing weight. More than that, he wants to turn his diet into a fundraiser and couple it with a march to call attention to the problem of teenage suicide. He wants people to sponsor his weight loss so he can donate the proceeds to a teen suicide hotline.

Tricia feels that a small Irish village is no place for a march (that’s just not the way they do things) and she doesn’t want the attention. Their three surviving children are split — their daughter fancies the idea, their rebellious son opposes it, and their other son is characteristically indifferent. Billy’s parents are against it — they think he’s glorifying obesity and suicide, when both should be a source of shame — as is the father of another teen suicide victim who doesn’t want to be reminded of his loss. Billy’s sister opposes the plan for the more practical reason that rapid weight loss (Billy wants to drop 200 pounds) isn’t healthy.

The silence that surrounds teen suicide (at least in Ireland), the refusal to engage the problem, is the novel’s strongest theme. The novel’s weakness is that it tries to do too much, loading several different family issues on top of the suicide and weight loss themes. The novel loses momentum when it veers away from Billy’s quest and addresses his mother’s illness or the swimming lessons he gives his son. Billy’s constant battle with self-doubt could also have been handled with more subtlety.

Parts of the novel are touching, as a reader would expect from a novel about loss. Ethel Rohan’s portrayal of the family’s emotions, particularly as they attend a coroner’s inquest, is convincing. Tricia is unsupportive to the point of cruelty, but that’s also convincing, given that most marriages don’t survive the loss of a child.

The novel suffers from redundancy (Billy, in particular, voices the same thoughts over and over, in much the same way) and it’s too determinedly “feel good” for my taste, although readers searching for a feel-good story will find one here. Teen suicide and obesity are both complex issues, but the story is a bit shallow. The Weight of Him earns my recommendation because the story’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses, and because it has something important to say, but I wouldn’t recommend the novel for anyone seeking a deep understanding of the issues it addresses.

RECOMMENDED

Loved the skilful layering - as straightforward or complex a story as the reader is willing to reach.

The title of this novel is apt as Billy is weighed down so heavy with grief, and also by his literal weight. Billy is a father of four and over 400 pounds. After years of hiding himself being his weight and working in a factory in small town Ireland, his world is turned upside down when his 17 year old son hangs himself. No note. No idea as to why.
So Billy decides he needs to make this loss worth something and wants to lose 200 pounds to raise money for suicide awareness. Throughout his personal grief we also get glimpses of the grief of his family, more notably his wife, but they generally remain side characters.

I admire the writer putting this story together, as although fictional, it really was following what Billy wanted to do which is make suicide a conversation point rather than an unsaid shame and help those who need help. In Ireland, rates for suicide are notably high among young men aged 16–34 years, who accounted for almost 40% of deaths by suicide in 2003 and a study of young Irish men aged 18-34 years revealed that 78% knew someone who had died by suicide, 42% knew more than one person, and 17% had a close friend who completed suicide. This is clearly an area that needs more focus and support and not just in Ireland. Around one million people complete suicide each year worldwide. This figure is higher than the combined numbers of people who die by homicide and war. It is also higher than the number of people who die in road traffic accidents in most European countries.
Unfortunately it is difficult to make a novel engaging and/or uplifting when focused on this topic, but I think this novel may have worked better if more of the family characters were developed,perhaps switching POVs, and more focus was given to future and hope. However, I would still read more of Rohan's work, and this novel has make me think and be reflective.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

<i> (all stats stated arefrom http://www.pisa.dcu.ie)</i>

This book was aptly named!!
I felt the "weight"'of this book all the way throughout. Both Billy's physical weight and the emotional weight of the subject matter was very heavy.
It was well written and describe what I imagine what one would feel like well, if one suffered through such a terrible loss

An interesting story of coping with grief engendered by the loss of a child and the loss of oneself in the process. Well written- simple in approach- but showing the human ability to recover and refocus on what remains of a lifetime.

A decent story, but incredibly sad and morose in my opinion. I found Billy to be such an incredibly sad character. I do think much of his life was written true to course, but parts of the story were infuriating to me because of the prejudice and meanness he experienced simply because of his weight. Hard to believe people can be so cruel.

There are some books that make little impression during reading and do not linger after they are put down, and unfortunately, The Weight of Him by Ethel Rohan was one of them. It is meant to be an emotionally heavy book about real life and real people, real struggles that many experience but do not openly talk about, like what happens when a loved one commits suicide. It is also meant to be hopeful, with a moral that states that “This too shall pass.” Despite understanding all of the things that it wanted to be, I still could not connect with the plot or any of the characters.

Set in modern day Ireland The Weight of Him is a novel about a morbidly obese man, Billy, and his family who are struggling to cope with the suicide of their eldest son & brother Michael. Billy is overburdened by the guilt of the man he could have been if it wasn’t for his weight; if he was a fitter man, he would’ve been a better father, and maybe his son would still be alive. Distant from his wife and his other three children, Billy decides to do something impactful to make sure that his son’s suicide was not for nothing. His goal becomes to lose half of himself - 200 pounds - while being sponsored by friends and family to raise money for suicide awareness. His dreams are big, just like him, but his family hate to bring Michael into public discussion. Through stubbornness and will, Billy loses weight, finds new goals, betters his career and fixes the gaps between people that he loves.

Maybe that’s why I found this book to be unimpressive. Even though I understood where it should hit the emotional points, which struggles it tried to explore, it was all neat and tidy. Billy went from being overweight, emotionally and personally stuck, to being thinner, bettering his relationships and gaining confidence and a voice as a person. It is nice, and sure it could be true, but there was no drama or tension. There weren’t any pitfalls or fails, not any that mattered at least. At the end, I don’t even remember how much weight Billy had lost.

Throughout the book Billy works on a memorial for his son, a small toy village of dolls which were discarded because they weren’t perfect enough. Billy imagines these imperfect objects to have a perfect life that his family did not have and never will. These moments broke up the main narrative as Billy slipped into this fantasy world, and I found them to be useless because I felt like they did not add anything to the plot. Billy fantasized the things that he wanted to be, with a family he could only imagine, though at the end he does realize that these are only fantasies.

This book could be poignant to the people who went through similar things as Billy. Having struggled with weight for most of my life, I understood how trapped and powerless his felt in his own body. I could relate to that struggle. For the things that I did not experience myself, such as loss through suicide, Rohan approached the experience of it with respect and feeling. There is a lot of truth in this book, the characters feel like people one might know… and yet… I don’t care about them.

Maybe it’s just one of those books that are not my cup of tea. The reality of it is too real and therefore boring. We usually read books to escape or explore a new world, feelings, characters, but all aspects of The Weight of Him are familiar, without new insides.

The Weight of Him would be a good pitch for a Lifetime Network movie. They go crazy for this feel-good shit.

My genre of choice when it comes to fiction novels is humor. I enjoy a good laugh and a step away from the harsh realities of life. However, every once in a while I want to read a book that doesn't have a happy ending, but a human ending. The Weight of Him is that book.

Billy Brennan's and his family's response to Michael's suicide is so realistic. Somehow, every member feels like they had failed as a sibling, grandparent, parent for not noticing the signs of his depression. The anger and sadness that seeped into the family was well written. I also enjoyed how Billy's love for Michael was written. He adored his son and reading him try and figure out what he had done as a father to drive him to suicide was heartbreaking.

Billy's fight with his eating disorder was written in a way that made me pity him but also want to have a snack if that makes sense. Rohan described the taste, textures, and smells of food so well that my stomach started to grumble! Billy's interaction with his parents and family after his public weight loss declaration were so irrational that it made me upset for Billy even though it had nothing to do with me. In the end, I understood that when people are grieving, rationality isn't something that is guaranteed.

I enjoyed the ending of this book immensely. There were rainbows and butterflies, or the family walking into the sunset. There was just an acceptance that what had happened, happened and that the only thing that you could do was go forward. It was real, human, and sad. But that's the world that sometimes you have to live in.

Rohan captured what a family suffering through the suicide of a loved one with such brillance and insight that I'm going to recommend this book to people who are slightly less emotional than I am.

(Yes, I almost cried while reading this on the train several times, whatever!)

I'm having such great experiences with NetGalley, I can't wait for my next read!

Thank you to Netgalley for my review copy to review impartially.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I read this book but I knew that it was not going to be a feel good novel. Obviously, from the very beginning there was huge sense of sadness to the writing. The author's descriptive prose was beautiful but I felt that I did not really connect with the family, most especially the main character. I found him to be a bit unbelievable and he seemed a little too pathetic. Maybe it was the frame of mind I was in but I could not finish the book - got to the 12th chapter before I gave up.

3.5 Billy is a large man, over 400 pounds and also a very sad man. His family, three remaining children, his wife, is in tatters after the suicide of his eldest son, only 17. He can't help going over and over the things he did wrong, his son left no note, and no one noticed anything wrong, not friends, not family. Food has always been his comfort but he decides to make his son's suicide count for something, to make a difference in suicide prevention. So with virtually no family support Billy sets off on a quest, a goal.

One can't help but feel for Billy, his story, his efforts, but in this too lies the problem. The other characters are virtually lifeless, his daughter rarely mentioned, Billy is the story and for me it became repetitive. Looked forward to his interactions with his youngest son, who was the second most complete character, and these showed growth in the both of them, father and son. A second chance in a way. Don't get me wrong this is a good story, a heartfelt one, just wish it had been a little more widespread, included a wider view.

ARC from Netgalley.

No parent should bury their child but unfortunately Billy Brennon had to do just that. Billy's son, Michael, was seventeen years old and unfortunately died at his own hand by hanging. Billy, his wife Tricia and their three other children were left shocked and tormented with grief.
Billy is a big man. He is considered morbidly obese weighing in at over 400 pounds. At Michael's funeral procession he was not able to walk with his family in the funeral procession and was humiliated at having to be driven to the cemetery. As Michael struggled with his own demons, Billy was also struggling with his increasing weight gain over the years. His attempts to remaIn invisible and to avoid the stares, smirks and comments about his size were never successful. Michael's death had Billy stop and take stock of his own life. He decided to try and bring awareness to the epidemic of suicide by asking for sponsorship from the community as he began a campaign to loose half of his body size. His goal was to raise awareness and funds to help "The Samaritans" in their efforts in suicide prevention.
His family was mortified that Billy would draw attention to himself in this way and were not at all supportive. This is Billy's story of his struggles and challenges as he attempts to reach his goal.
I liked how the author, Ethel Rohan, was able to portray both Billy's determination and at the same time his family's resistance and fears. The story not only brings attention to suicide awareness and prevention but also focuses on the prejudices and cruelty that overweight people face every day. I found myself totally absorbed in the story and liked how the author was able to portray all emotions involved and to dig deeper into Billy's long standing need to use food for comfort. Not all questions about Michael's suicide are answered but then again in life we do not always find the answers.
I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book from the publisher, St. Martin's Press, and Netgalley and this is my honest review.

I received an ARC of this through NetGalley for my honest review.

This a was a beautifully moving story. A study of the human condition and frailties. On the surface, it was about a morbidly obese man and his struggle to lose weight. His motivation was the loss of his son to suicide and how he might use his journey of weight loss to raise awareness for suicide prevention. It was so much more than that though. It was a story of loss, grief and acceptance. How Billy moved through his journey was gripping. You don't have to have struggled with weight issues to understand how we hide ourselves, so afraid to lay our true selves out there for the world to see. Whether we hide behind weight or drugs or alcohol or any millions of other vices or masks, we all truly just want to be seen and accepted. This author captured Billy's story with care and honesty. I won't soon be forgetting this!

Billy Brennan has worked as an inspector at a toy manufacturing company for twenty years. His family is grieving the recent suicide of their eldest son Michael. He was only seventeen years old when he took his own life and he did not leave a note.

Billy weighs 401 pounds and has had difficulty with obesity throughout his life. He has been warned by his doctor that he is unhealthy and will face future medical issues if he does not change his lifestyle. Using grief as a motivator, he organizes a fundraiser raiser for suicide prevention. His stated goal is to lose 200 pounds which is half his body weight. While this project helps Billy work through his issues, it disconnects him from his wife, parents and children.

Billy seeks to take back control of his life in places that he has previously ignored. His progress is gradual and inconsistent as he continues to address the flaws he has suppressed during his life. The author handles the subject of obesity delicately and gracefully.

This was a really lovely read, tackling the extremely emotive subjects of suicide and gross obesity with both sensitivity and a good dash of Irish lyrical humour Me Rohan's character's are wonderfully portrayed and the story is utterly engaging from start to finish. A sad book with a very uplifting message and totally enjoyable. Highly recommend it.

received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a novel about Billy, a father who recently lost his son, Michael, to suicide.

Instead of "hiding" after the tragedy, Billy decides to tackle another problem in his life...obesity. This becomes a focal point for him and also becomes a way for him to pay homage to his son. While attempting to honor his son's memory, he is met with resistance and doubt from family and friends.

During this novel, the reader is a front seat passenger on a rollercoaster ride of love, fear, resentment, encouragement and lastly, triumph ( a success for Billy...) It's the journey of what a family may experience during the aftermath of such a tragedy.

Ethel Rohan, thank you for writing about such a relatable, sensitive and misunderstood subject with love and care. Highly recommended!