What's Eating Gilbert Grape (Peter Hedges)

      
  How many times have I heard of the movie. I was a kid and remembering hearing the title and thinking that a guy must have gotten some flesh eating disease. I did not know of the phrase, What's eating you?, and of course didn't know that the title meant that there was a guy who was truly bothered by everything.  
   
   I'm the kind of person that believes things happen for a reason so I can't beat myself up for not having read this long ago because I know I would have loved it. So I must have been meant to have read it now. Anyway, I loved the book. I could have done without picturing Johnny Depp or Leonardo Dicaprio the entire time but if i'm right (I haven't seen the movie yet) the casting was perfect. I do enjoy imagining my own characters though.

   So we're in Iowa and the picture Peter Hedges paints is of a small town where everyone knows everyone and oh how do I love that setting. Gilbert Grape, our protagonist and narrator is basically fed up with life. He's a born pessimist and I was hanging on his every thought. He's one of six kids and lives at home at age 24 with his very obese mother, Bonnie, his younger retarded brother Arnie, his younger sister Ellen and his older sister Amy. They all live together in a house that's about to cave in due to his mother's weight bearing down on the floor. She hasn't stopped eating since her husband killed himself when Gilbert was 7. Arnie is about to turn 18 and the story revolves around the event. The other two siblings, both older, are out of the house until the party and we see the entire family in action. Gilbert falls in love with a girl (who turns out to be fifteen) and he seems to not have a problem with beginning (at least in his head) a relationship with her.

His friend, Tucker sounds like a dorky schmuck but is handy so he's asked to fix the ceiling where the mother sits above, that's about the crack open. Gilbert works at the local grocery store- and refused to step inside the new commercialized store featuring electric doors, lobster tanks and a variety of breakfast cereals that the owner of Gilbert's grocery store can't conceive of. 

So it's one of those stories that isn't so much about plot but about relationships and the interaction between the characters. I appreciated the inner thoughts of Gilbert. He's a regular guy who just happens to be extra cynical. But he's a family guy at heart which makes all his honesty likable.  

I really loved this book and am looking forward to another one by him.