Dad is Fat: A Comedy Book That I Found More Along the Lines of Horror!

A Review By: Amelia

Jim Gaffigan is a hilarious stand-up comedian who became famous for jokes about food and laziness. He can go off, seemingly forever, on cake and bacon and don’t ever get him started on Hot Pockets! Based on how much I love his stand-up performance, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on his book.

Dad is Fat isn’t quite a memoir or autobiography; more a serious of funny essay-like stories that don’t quite have anything to do with the previous chapter but aren’t completely separate either.

Gaffigan goes into great detail about his children and family life within the essays and, well, that’s about it. I do realize that when Gaffigan wrote this book he did it with every intention of only making it about fatherhood, but by about half way through, you’ll want him talk about anything else. Seriously, anything else at all! There’s only so many times he can say how terrible everything is and then add ‘just kidding–I love my kids and they’re great and you should all have kids too’ (that’s not an exact quote, mind you, just how I perceived the whole book).

Dad is Fat is an alright book, which definitely disappointed me because it could have been so much more than it was. I did laugh out loud at a few bits and I absolutely guffawed at more than a few of the pictures and their captions but I found that the funniest bits were the bits I already knew because he’d already used them in his stand-up routine. Not to mention that–although he preaches how wonderful it is to have children–the stories he told of his five children were enough to leave my (already sky-high anxieties about having children) pretty much maxed out all the way through! As a side note, I should point out that I’m terrified of giving birth/having children and, because of this, I found myself unable to get completely into it. A book that was supposed to be funny, actually ended up being more than a little terrifying for me!

My final thoughts on Dad is Fat are that it’s an okay book. Some parts were really hilarious (mostly because of their accompanying pictures), but a lot of it was just reading through his stand up (which is better if you watch him actually perform it) and, although still funny, wasn’t exactly what I was looking for when I picked up this book to read it. I’d say read this book if Gaffigan is completely new to you and his re-used stand-up is still fresh. Even better though, read it if you need a reason not to ever have five children: as if any of us needed anymore reasons than we already have to not have five children!