Magic Pill

Bloomsbury 336pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99

When a friend had a fatal heart attack in her mid-40s, the journalist Johann Hari made a “snap decision” to start injecting the weight-loss drug Ozempic, said James Le Fanu in Literary Review. Hari, who had long struggled with his weight, knew that Ozempic (pictured) – which had originally been licensed as a diabetes medication – had “become a phenomenon” thanks to its “dramatic effects and endorsements from the rich and famous”. Sure enough, Hari noticed its impact immediately: served his usual breakfast at his local café – a large toasted bun filled with chicken and mayonnaise – he felt full after a few bites. Within six months, he was a stone-and-a-half lighter. But he also felt “pensive and tense”, “emotionally dulled”, and began to worry about the drug’s “less pleasing effects”. He has now written Magic Pill, which explores the impact of the new weight-loss drugs. Written with “considerable verve”, it seems destined (like Hari’s previous books) to become a bestseller.

These drugs are a “big deal”, said Tom Chivers in The Guardian. Sales have been “astronomical”, and Novo Nordisk, Ozempic’s manufacturer, is “now the most valuable company in Europe”. A serious book on them would be welcome, but Hari has “failed to write it”. In 2012, he left his job at The Independent after fabricating quotes and anonymously smearing rivals. And plenty here gives cause for concern – from Hari’s shaky grasp of science (he doesn’t seem to know what genes are) to his reliance on “convenient quotes from pseudonymous friends”. I, too, was sceptical at first, said Paul Nuki in The Daily Telegraph. But Magic Pill won me over: it is both “wonderfully accessible” and even-handed. Hari is also “excellent” on the “booming ultra-processed food industry” – which creates the need for so many to resort to weight-loss drugs in the first place.