The Oarsome Adventures of a Fat Boy Rower 

Kevin Biggar

Novel

The Oarsome Adventures of a Fat Boy Rower is a story full of determination and struggles. This story shows the true story of Kevin Biggar and his determination to achieve something in life and move out of his comfort zone to find happiness. In the story Kevin Biggar decides to find happiness he had to do something with his life that’s when he decided he was going to race across the atlantic.

A character I found interesting was Rob Hamill, I found him interesting as he had already won the race the previous time and as soon as he lost and made it across the Atlantic he instantly accused Kevin and his rowing partner Jamie of cheating because they couldn’t have beaten him. I found this interesting as he had already succeeded and was so stuck on winning he tried to take away other people’s success just so he could win. 

Throughout the book Kevin Biggar showed his determination to change his life. A message I took from the text is nothing is everything is possible if you don’t give up and put in enough effort. Kevin Biggar shows this as he begins after losing his job and doing nothing in life, living with his Mum and then he put his mind to something that seemed out of reach and unachievable at the time and worked for two years to toward it unrelentlessly. I believe this drive is important in all aspects of life no matter how big or small they are. This mindset is key to find any success and teaches readers that if you want to achieve something you must work hard and not give up when there is a problem our challenge. After reading this book I believe that nothing is impossible if you truly want to achieve it, when he first considered doing the race he wrote a list of pros and cons of trying to participate in the race.

“1. I could die. 2. I’m not into pain (the books about rowing the ocean are pretty united about the pain involved, what all those weeks at sea do to your backside and hands etc). 3. I hate getting out of bed. (A 2 hours on, 2 hours off rowing schedule means getting out of bed 6 times a day. Can’t fool me.) 4. I don’t know how to row.” He uses this list of cons that he made when he first had the idea to highlight how easy it is to stop an idea before it has even started because that’s the easy thing to do, this only shows what could go wrong for him but this race has ended up as a massive positive and has turned his life around.

Kevin Biggar experienced lots of challenges in his time while he was preparing for the race he says “I was told that 90% of the race was getting to the start line. That isn’t true. It’s more like 99%.” this shows the difficulty he had while preparing for the race. While preparing he struggled to find a partner to race with he had one pull out very close before the race because of a back problem this was a huge setback and almost ruined his dream that was almost a reality, He struggled to find someone and was starting to lose hope when his friend found someone who was willing to race it was close to the race and still a challenge to prepare him for the race. This almost crushed what he had been working toward for almost two years with something completely out of his control.

I would suggest this book to all students because it highlights key messages for today’s society. This book tells readers that not everything is given and that you need to work to get where you want to be. It shows that hard work pays off as Kevin goes from watching tv all day to breaking world records two years later this is an inspirational story for young readers and can give them courage and a belief that they can achieve anything they want, that they never had before.