Kindle Price:	$3.99
Sold by:	Random House LLC Price set by seller.

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add an

audiobook with Audible narration for $7.49

Audiobook Price: $7.86

Save: $0.37 (5%)

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Alexander McCall Smith

+ Follow

More books from this author

Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party (Kindle Single) (A Vintage Short) Kindle Edition

by Alexander McCall Smith (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3.9 2,495 ratings

See all formats and editions

An all-new, never-before-published original short novel by the bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, about a hapless American tourist’s larger-than-life comical trip to Ireland.

Shortlisted for the 2015 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction

Cornelius P. “Fatty” O'Leary and his wife, Betty, plan a vacation in Ireland for his fortieth birthday, where they will tour his ancestral homeland and relax in the countryside. Almost immediately, things go terribly wrong: the seats in economy class on the plane are too small; the country hotel’s dinner spread and bathroom fixtures leave much to be desired; and the down-to-earth O’Learys find their fellow guests are more than a little snobbish.

In this amusing and touching portrayal of a kindly, misunderstood soul, McCall Smith has created yet another memorable character who will become an instant favorite to his many fans.

An eBook short.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00LRIXL28
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (August 5, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 5, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4517 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 127 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #673,314 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #248 in Kindle Singles: Literature & Fiction
- #1,772 in Satire Fiction
- #3,825 in General Humorous Fiction

Customer Reviews:
3.9 2,495 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Alexander McCall Smith

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world’s most prolific and most popular authors. His career has been a varied one: for many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Then, after the publication of his highly successful 'No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency' series, which has sold over twenty million copies, he devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers through the world. These include the Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in The Scotsman, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the Von Igelfeld series, and the Corduroy Mansions series, novels which started life as a delightful (but challenging to write) cross-media serial, written on the website of the Telegraph Media Group. This series won two major cross-media awards - Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Award 2009 for a Cross Media Project and the New Media Age award.

In addition to these series, Alexander writes stand-alone books. 2014 sees publication of three new novels which fall into this area: 'The Forever Girl'; 'Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party'; and 'Emma' – a reworking of the classic Jane Austen novel. This year there will also be a stunning book on Edinburgh, 'A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh'. Earlier stand alone novels include 'La’s Orchestra Saves the World' and 'Trains and Lovers: A Hearts Journey'.

Alexander is also the author of collections of short stories, academic works, and over thirty books for children. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the British Book Awards Author of the Year Award in 2004 and a CBE for service to literature in 2007. He holds honorary doctorates from nine universities in Europe and North America. In March of 2011 he received an award from the President of Botswana for his services through literature to that country.

Alexander McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh. He is married to a doctor and has two daughters.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

2,495 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Bonnie Jenkins

Short and sweet

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2024

Verified Purchase

I thoroughly enjoyed this novella about a stocky man from Arkansas visiting the upper crust of the UK , well written

Xxxx

Helpful

Sharon Isch

But will he get his just desserts?

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2015

Verified Purchase

HUH??? When scrolling through my reviews just now, Amazon tells me it can't find a title for this book. Weird, as "Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party" jumps right out at you from the cover, as does the name of its well-known author, Alexander McCall Smith

That said, this is one of those fun and easy reads that can fit in a pocket,and help kill time on trains and in waiting rooms. This is the story of an overweight Arkansan who goes to Ireland, somehow ends up owning a horse he can't afford, comes home, gets shoved into a weight loss clinic and --- or so it would appear--- somehow manages to be headed toward a happily ever after nonetheless. All in a mere 174 pages.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Fern Amper

Not Up To McCalls Usual Standards

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2015

Verified Purchase

I am a true devotee of Alexander McCall Smith and try to get my hands on everything that comes out. Sometimes I have to make a real effort to get books that have come out in Europe but have not yet hit the American market. That was the case with this book, and now I dont feel it was worth the effort. His choice of topic-mocking fat people, is a poor one in my opinion. It is true that in the end, good values win out and the reader is pleasantly surprised. But the assumption throughout the book is that most people think less of fat people, they are easy to fool, they are clumsy and their misfortunes are entertaining. Yes, yes, it all works out well in the end. But I was surprised that this author, who always roots for the underdog, and champions the cause of human rights of the misunderstood, wrote a book with this much hurtful content. I would chalk it up to a bad decision from an excellent writer. I certainly will continue to be a major fan and I am glad he is so prolific so I can find a new book of his quite frequently.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Just Me

There Is a Message In This Book

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2014

Verified Purchase

I have quite a different viewpoint of this book, which does not surprise me in the very least.
I find the treatment of this gentleman, appalling. He is a gentleman, whether overweight or pencil-thin.
I haven't finished this book, yet. But, I am intrigued how the author has written this account. Are we to laugh at this gentleman's plight, simply because he doesn't appear to be hurt by the insensitive treatment by others? Because someone laughs about the harm being done to them, or processes it in a positive way, does that imply that no harm has been done?
No.
Harm is being done to Fatty O'Leary. Constantly.
This is not a book written to be taken as humor, in my opinion. I find this book to be a bit dark, only in the respect of how this gentleman is being treated.
Excellent craftsmanship to expose the careless treatment of another human being, and make it appear to be acceptable. Our traditions are cruel in the treatment of those who are different than ourselves. This book examines one of those traditions. These people are thoughtless, insensitive barbarians. In my opinion, the reader is supposed to realize that.
The only place I've considered amusing, is the loss of suitcase and O'Leary's attempt to make the best of it. I find his attitude inspiring.
As I stated, this is not (In my opinion) a book meant to be laughed at. This book has a message.
And, there are literally millions of people who need to hear that message.
O'Leary and I have quite a bit in common. His may be overweightedness, whereas mine is anorexic. But, we've both been the target for harassment for simply being different...

25 people found this helpful

Helpful

grannyof5

A Sweet and Funny Story

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is a very sweet and funny story. But most of the laughs come at the expense of the main character, and since I felt his embarrassement and awkwardness, the humor was tinged with sadness at times. The fact that this poor man tried to take it all in stride kept the mood of the story upbeat. One thing that was puzzling was the lack of variety in the dialects of the characters. Mr. and Mrs. O'Leary did not "sound" at all like a middle-aged couple from Arkansas. All characters spoke essentially the same way, in spite of their differing stations in life. I did enjoy the book, and have ordered two more by this author.

Helpful

Oakley

Perhaps If You Like Slapstick Humor ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

First off, I am embarrassed to say that I didn't realize until the end of the book that the title was a metaphor and that Fatty doesn't ever, in fact, have a diner party. More the pity. Anyway … I found the book rather ridiculous and boring. It is nice to see a fat person who doesn't make excuses for himself, and realizes full well the consequences of his choices. Fatty is a likeable character with an adoring wife, who appreciates all the joy he can get in life. The book is a series of embarrassing and humiliating circumstances that Fatty endures, for the most part because of his weight. Yet he manages to persevere with his good humor largely intact. However, I just didn't find anything funny or interesting at all about any of Fatty's predicaments. It was predominantly slapstick humor, which is a type of humor I rarely enjoy. I had only one LOL moment, and that was when poor Fatty was compelled, due to unfortunate circumstances, to wear some decidedly odd attire during his trip to Ireland. A stranger mentioned offhandedly that Fatty must be an American. "I can tell by your clothes." Well, it was funny in the context ...

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Shobha M.

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on May 5, 2015

Verified Purchase

excellent

Alexandra King

Un pochino di Mark Twain, senza il suo genio…

Reviewed in Italy on October 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

Una favoletta senza pretese, abbastanza divertente, adatta da leggere durante un viaggio in treno.
Mi ha ricordato l’idea di The Innocents Abroad, di Mark Twain, ma molto meno sottile.
È la storia di una coppia di Americani di origine Irlandese che decidono di visitare finalmente la terra dei loro antenati e si scontrano con una serie di disavventure abbastanza assurde durante il loro soggiorno in terra d’Irlanda, ma ne escono alla fine premiati dai loro buoni sentimenti.
Un apologo un po’ di maniera.

Translate review to English

M C Challis

Well written but not quite as engaging as some of his previous books.

Reviewed in Spain on October 16, 2014

Verified Purchase

The main characters are, literally, larger than life but I felt the ending came to a full stop too abruptly.

Jon McKnight

Alexander McCall Smith: singular or plural?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2014

Verified Purchase

Fat people have a thin time in literature. From Falstaff to Bunter to Enid Blyton's Fatty Trotteville, those who are larger than life in real life are inevitably portrayed as larger-than-life characters in fiction.

They are seen as figures of fun, fair game, warnings to us all that we, too, could end up being held in such little esteem if we allow ourselves to become, through over-indulgence, outlandishly large.

So I couldn't wait to discover what Alexander McCall Smith would do with, or to, the eponymous hero of his comic novel Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party.

Those of us who have read his unputdownable 44 Scotland Street series know that the author has form when it comes to fat people.

Who can forget Lard O'Connor, the Glaswegian gangster who, despite his spectacular bulk and menacing approach to conducting business, nevertheless emerged as a sympathetic character who wasn't just nice to his mum (the Krays cliché) but had some surprisingly redeeming qualities?

His weight did for him, of course, as he collapsed under it and fell down the steps to a basement café, but the author gives the impression that Lard was just as likely to give a freezing man his own overcoat as he might be to give a gangland rival a concrete one.

But Fatty O'Leary (real name Cornelius, though resigned to calling himself by the unimaginative nickname his girth was always going to force upon him) is a decent, loving, and relatively ordinary man.

Apart, that is, from his weight.

His enormous size, while accepted by his devoted wife and tolerated by the expanding-waistlined American public, is far from ordinary in the eyes of chair, clothes and bath designers who tend to aim their creations at the more regularly-proportioned – or what they might unkindly refer to as "normal" people.

Thus we cringe with embarrassment as passengers either side of him in the Economy cabin of an aircraft complain to a steward that Fatty is spilling out of his seat, Barbapapa-style, and squashing them to the point that it's restricting their breathing.

They have a point - and a serious medical one - so it's a fair bet that most readers, if they are being honest rather than politically correct, will sympathise with the squashed passengers rather than Fatty, whose unnatural size is, after all, a lifestyle choice.

Pragmatically, the stewards upgrade Fatty to First Class, where he feels honoured and pampered until he's served with an Economy Class meal and told in no uncertain terms that while he may be sitting in First for spacial reasons, he remains an Economy Class passenger.

When the situation is reversed and the squashed passengers are upgraded to First Class so that Fatty can return to Economy and have the three seats to himself, he's horrified to discover that they, unlike him, are given the First Class food and fine wines that he'd been denied.

The only reason he can think of for the difference in treatment that he and the two squashees received is that they, unlike him, are thin.

And, of course, he's right.

The author doesn't show his own hand in the fatness-right-or-wrong debate, but subjects poor Fatty to a string of indignities that lead to the conclusion that Fatty O'Leary is an over-large peg trying to fit into a normal-sized hole.

He becomes stuck in a bath and has to be carried downstairs, still in it, only to be abandoned in the hotel courtyard at the mercy of his chief tormentor when the men carrying him have to break off to chase some cows back into a field.

His suitcase is lost in transit, leaving him with just the clothes he stands up in, only for those to vanish mysteriously from the laundry room.

He also loses his shoes, in a lake; his face, at dinner; and his dignity (again and again) in front of the supercilious sophisticate Rupert O'Brien, whose mock concern for Fatty's plight is more damning and crushing than any names he might have called him.

The only thing Fatty doesn't lose, in fact, is weight.

Though if Fatty were in a position to read the book instead of being a character in it, he might well shed a few pounds through the sheer physical exertion of laughing as much as I did at this masterpiece of a comic novel.

Like the great David Nobbs, creator of Reggie Perrin and author of 20 other novels, Alexander McCall Smith not only creates great sit-coms between the covers but comes out with some sublime lines.

You'll have to read the novel to discover them for yourself, but there's a wonderful reference to Darwin and "the survival of the fishes" and a beautiful example of how a slight pause and a couple of additional words can elevate a thought from the mundane to the magnificent:

"No," he said. "I would not like to drown," adding, "on balance."

It's that precision with language and the comic timing it embodies that makes Alexander McCall Smith the truly great writer he is.

As I noted in my review of Bertie's Guide To Life And Mothers (Book 9 in the Scotland Street series), he is also one of the most prolific authors alive – though it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that "Alexander McCall Smith" was, in fact, identical triplets imbued with the same literary talent and gusto.

I have no evidence, not having met him (or them) yet, but I continue to monitor the media in the half-hope that there will be independently-verified reports of Alexander McCall Smith appearing in two, or possibly three, places simultaneously. Then his secret will be out.

Otherwise, comic novelists like me will simply have to accept that one man really can be that terrific and prolific, which is so daunting that it could easily make some of us give up writing altogether and settle for merely being readers.

Almost four centuries after his death, the debate still rages over whether Shakespeare could possibly have written all the works attributed to him.

I've always suspected that intellectual jealousy is at work there, as some people just don't want to accept that any one person could produce so much and to such a high standard in one lifetime.

But when they try to persuade us that Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe wrote the plays instead, they create a similar problem to the one they were trying to solve: if Bacon had written them all, they wouldn't want to believe that he, either, had been able to write them all in his lifetime.

So Alexander McCall Smith (singular or plural) may spark a similar debate, especially if he continues producing books at the breathtaking rate he's achieved so far.

But back to the book: it might be unprecedented for a novel to be prescribed on the NHS here in the UK, but this appropriately slim volume could be a major weapon in the Government's battle against obesity.

For anyone who's tempted to keep stuffing themselves until they resemble the likes of Fatty O'Leary will almost certainly be deterred, permanently, if they devour this book first.

3 people found this helpful

E. L.

Ein Kleines Buch ueber ein Grosser Mann

Reviewed in Germany on August 10, 2014

Verified Purchase

Bevor ich das Buch beschreibe, muss ich zwei wichtige Sachen erwaehnen: erstens hat dieses Buch gar nichts mit einem Festessen zu tun. Eher eine Kurzgeschichte als ein Roman, handelt sich dieses Buchlein ueber einen Uebergewichtigen Mann und dessen Erfahrungen im Ausland. Zweitens, lassen Sie sich nicht von dem ziemlich teuren Preis abschrecken (das Buch wurde in Italien -nicht in Asien- gedruckt und gebunden). Dieses neue Werk von Alexander McCall Smith ist jeder Cent wert.

Als Cornelius Patrick O'Leary getauft, zieht der Titelheld dem Spitznahme "Fatty" (auf Deutsch: Dicke) vor. Eine genaue Angabe ueber Fattys Gewicht fehlt, aber es laesst sich vermuten, dass er extrem fettleibig ist.

Fuer Fattys 40. Geburtstag schenkt ihm seine Frau Betty eine zwei-wochige Reise nach Irland. Die gruene Insel ist naemlich das Geburtsland Fattys Grossvater, der vor dem ersten Weltkrieg in Amerika eingewandert ist.

Bevor er sein Reiseziel erreicht, erlebt Fatty das erste Unglueck in eine Reihe von kuenftigen Vorfaellen. Der Ausloeser dafuer ist leider sein Gewicht.

In Irland angekommen erlebt Fatty immer wieder peinliche Situationen infolge seiner Koerpergroesse. Fattys groesste Herausforderung aber entpuppt sich in der Form einer einziger Person: Rupert O'Brien.

Herr O'Brien ist ein beruehmter irischer Kunstkritik, der auch im Fattys Pension uebernachtet. Arrogant und egoistisch, Rupert O'Brien hat es gern seine ZuhoererIn herabzuwuerdigen. Fatty leidet sehr unter diese Behandlung bis ein neuer Gast im Pension auftaucht und sich mit Fatty befreundet.

Zurueckgekehrt aus dem Urlaub wird Fatty wieder mit seiner Fettleibigkeit konfrontiert: um gesundheitliche Schaeden vorzubeugen, wird er von seinem Arzt beraten, abzunehmen. Was zunaechst folgt, bringt ein befriedigender Abschluss zu diesem Buch.

Chapeau an Alexander McCall Smith. Dieser begabte Schriftsteller hat eine bewegende Geschichte abgefasst, die etwas wichtiges vermittelt:

Was Fatty tief ins Herz trifft ist weder seine persoenliche Beziehung zu seiner Fettleibigkeit noch die moeglichen darausfolgenen gesundheitlichen Schaeden. Fattys Schmerz stammt vielmehr von dem schroffen, vorschreibenden und -teilweiser- unempfindlichen Verhalten der Gesellschaft ihm gegenueber.

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party (Kindle Single) (A Vintage Short) Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought

Product details

Videos

About the author

Alexander McCall Smith

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries