Grace White and her brother Robert, overweight and affluent, are desperate to hang onto their respective love interests. Grace's husband Rich is bonking every woman he can talk into bed. Grace is willing to look beyond his affairs if she can just have her marriage back. Robert's law school fling James's interest diminished as Robert's waistline increased, but Robert has never moved on. The only solution? Losing those excess pounds. by any means necessary. And when James finds a supernatural healer who can sculpt living flesh like clay, beautiful ugliness ensues. Will Robert and Grace get what they want, or what they deserve? In An Ideal for Living, Marshall Moore has written a shocking fantastique, a novel that captures the Zeitgeist of contemporary urban life, where beauty is a commodity craved, consumed, and traded.