Slimming Down

By Alex Shishin

Mel, a master teacher at prestigious high school on Long Island, envies Philip, an underpaid adjunct college language teacher, because he lusts for his beautiful wife, Chiharu, a business woman working in Manhattan. Mel deserts his “fat” wife, Janice, and their children for an English teaching job in Japan. Janice suffers a dark night of the soul because she is convinced she in fat. She recalls her school days when Mel, her future husband, thought her beautiful and idolized her. She also recalls how and her beautiful friends danced to the “Too Fat Polka” at the high school dances. Only now she realizes how this music must have hurt the fat students and feels ashamed of herself. She get the idea of joining a gym to regain her youthful body. Encouraged by Chiharu, Janice she does so. While she is to a great extent successful after a year, she still cannot get Mel back. To make Mel jealous and bring him home she has affairs, one with a man who wants to marry her and another with someone Mel knows.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Shishin
• Release date: Nov 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463933749

Alex Shishin

Alex Shishin has published fiction, non-fiction and photography in Japan, North America, and Europe in print and online. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Shishin is a permanent resident of Japan. Shishin is the author “Nippon 2357:A Utopian Ecological Tale,” and five other ebooks published exclusively by Smashwords and available for free. He is co-author with Stephan F. Politzer of “Four Parallel Lives of Eight Notable Individuals,” also published by Smashwords. Shishin's short story "Mr. Eggplant Goes Home," first published in “Prairie Schooner” received an O. Henry Award Honorable Mention and was anthologized in “Student Body: Stories About Students and Professors” (University of Wisconsin Press). His short story "Shades," originally published in “Sunday Afternoon” (Kobe) was anthologized in The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press) and reprinted by invitation in “The East” (Tokyo).  Shishin’s book “Rossiya: Voices from the Brezhnev Era” (a Russian-American memoir of a train odyssey through the Soviet Union and Poland) was published by iUniverse. It is available as a print-on-demand book and an ebook. Shishin has also published a collection of photographs entitled “Ordinary Strangeness” with Viovio in conjunction with his joint exhibition at the Twenty-first Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa, Japan. It is available from the publisher online. Alex Shishin holds degrees in English from the University of California, Berkeley (BA, Phi Beta Kappa) the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MFA) and the Union Institute and University (PhD).

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