Two new from Jennifer Weiner

I've been thinking for the past hour about where to start with tonight's post. Now that I'm writing it, I'm still no closer to an answer. I read so many books this summer and fall that it's hard to figure out where to start.

But I settled on the two Jennifer Weiner books I read recently, "Fly Away Home" and "Then Came You". These are her eighth and ninth books. I've mentioned before some of the things I like about her books: they're funny, entertaining stories about "the rest of us", without the extensive materialism that plagues so many books aimed at women (we don't ALL live to shop, you know...)

Both are present in her latest two books, although I liked "Then Came You" much more than "Fly Away Home." Although she says "Fly Away Home" wasn't inspired by a particular event, it had a vague, ripped-from-the-headlines feel, heightened by the unfortunate coincidence that Weiner shares a last name with a recent philandering politician. That's the subject matter of this book: what happens to the wife and two adult daughters of a respected senator after his affair with a girl young enough to be a daughter herself is revealed.

I hate to say it, but it was kind of dull. The characters felt rather stock: the kooky, screwed-up youngest fresh from rehab, her love interest, the uptight, little-miss-perfect-with-a-secret older daughter, her schlubby husband, and the wife who's repressed her own personality for a very long time in service of her husband. In fact, I bet you can guess a few key things about the plot just from the character descriptions here (what do you suppose the older daughter's "secret" is?). It wasn't bad overall, but not her best one.

Certainly not as good as "Then Came You." This book deals with the subjects of surrogacy and egg donation. It's told from several points of view. Julie, the egg donor, is a college student who sells her eggs to fund rehab treatments for her father, a depressive who lost everything when he turned to drugs and alcohol. Annie struggles to stretch her husband's small military salary and becomes a surrogate mother. She's carrying the baby of India, the new wife of a New York City financier. But his daughter Bettina doesn't trust India one bit, and even has her investigated. Each of these women have their own chapters in the book, and it's interesting to see how the story weaves together and how the characters develop.

Julie's goes in a fairly surprising direction. India, it turns out, is hiding a sad past behind her face lift and fake first name. Bettina and Annie are both struggling with their socioeconomic status: Annie has everything she ever wanted but enough money to allow her to live a decent life, and Bettina is so worried about being seen as spoiled or entitled that she overcompensates. The baby that Annie's carrying, along with an unexpected tragedy, brings everyone together. In fact, I'd say this is one of her better books.

Fresh Jennifer Weiner -- just in time for spring

Last week, I went to the library near work on my lunch hour. My main goal was to settle my fines, but of course I looked around. The place is about the size of my living room, so it's a good half-hour break destination. I only got three books, but one of them was the new Jennifer Weiner, Best Friends Forever. I did that one first, since it was a 7-day book, and got it back only one day (or 12 hours, as I prefer to view it) late.

As I've said before, I like Jennifer Weiner a great deal. Like Lisa Jewell, her books are not always terribly deep. They almost invariably meander towards a happy ending, with the heroine getting her man, solving most of her problems, and shaking off the last droplets from the storm of the book before walking into her new, happy, sunny life.

Best Friends Forever is no exception. The heroine of our novel is 33-year-old Addie Downs. She's such an underdog that it's hard not to root for her. Her life, thus far, has been rather sad and dreary. Picked on through all of high school (because she was fat; it wouldn't be a Weiner novel without a character with weight issues), she lost the closeness of her family early on, with her parents both dying during what should have been her freshman year of college. During high school, she also 'lost' her brother in a sense: he was in a terrible car accident and suffered from brain damage. Although he's able to have some semblance of a life, he's not really a companion for Addie.

But in a way, Addie's most devastating loss, the one she truly never got over, was that of her best friend Valerie. Valerie, in high school, was everything that Addie wasn't. Skinny, pretty, popular, well-liked. During their senior year, they had a terrible falling-out and never spoke again...until the beginning of this novel.

The novel mostly takes place in the past. The present-day plot is rather thin: it involves an accident at the class reunion, the lonely, unhappy cop who investigates it (and you know what his real role in the plot is from literally the moment he appears in the story), and the unlikely, unforeseen reunion of Valerie and Addie after fifteen years and a horrible betrayal. But like Jewell, Weiner's characters are enjoyable, her writing is strong, and she paces her stories well. I enjoyed reading something where the female friendship was the primary focus, too.

If you hate Jennifer Weiner, stay the hell away from this one. It probably won't change your mind, but fans will enjoy it.

Cannie's Back

With all of the good books I picked out yesterday, I'd like to say that it was hard to choose one to read first. But Jennifer Weiner's Certain Girls is a 7-day book, and I also suspected it'd be a fairly fast read, so that one got the nod. I was right, too: I started the book around 8 or 9 last night and finished it around 4 this afternoon. I should note that, as this is a sequel to Good in Bed, it's not possible to write about this book without throwing in some spoilers from the last. Be on your guard.

The story alternates between the points of view of Cannie, and her now-13-year-old daughter Joy. I was disappointed a bit in Cannie at 40. All of her sharp, funny edges seemed worn off by marriage and motherhood. Her profession is to write a long-running science fiction series under a pseudonym, and she spends the rest of the time grating potatoes for a latke dinner at the synagogue, driving carpool, cooking and baking, etc. She's not as quick to poke fun at the world, and the truly funny scenes are fewer.

When her husband, Dr. Peter Krushelevansky from the last book, suggests finding a surrogate mother and having another baby, Cannie's reaction is extremely strange. She confesses to the reader that she's not all that into it, yet she capitulates to the lengthy, expensive and painful process. It doesn't seem to make so much as a ripple in Cannie's tranquil waters. Instead, she's more concerned with Joy's bat mitzah.

Joy is the real driving force of this story. She's struggling with all of the typical thirteen-year-old stuff, and more. After being the dork with the hearing aids all her life, she has a chance to become popular, although it comes at the expense of her two oldest, closest friends (oddly, Weiner gave her young heroine a Gay Best Friend too), her grades (she quits wearing her hearing aids in school) and her conscience (turns out the popular girls like to shoplift). Since Cannie was never a kewl kid, she's dismayed at some of the more superficial interests Joy is developing, which causes lots and lots of fights.

Joy has also read her mom's novel for the first time, and is shocked, hurt and embarrassed. This is a sort of "meta" plot twist: the book that Cannie wrote is supposed to be the book where we first met her, but fictionalized from what "really" happened in the book that strikes me (from her other works and the little I know of her life) as a fictionalized version of things that actually happened to Jennifer Weiner. Anyway, in that book, Cannie has reinvented herself as an easy girl, and she also makes it clear that Joy was unexpected. These two facts make Joy question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her father and the rest of her family.

All of these tensions come to bear on Joy's bat mitzvah. I was 18 before I met a Jewish person, so I have no firsthand knowlege of this, but apparently bat and bar mitzahs these days rival the Super Sweet 16 parties made famous by MTV. Joy's friends are all having huge parties with hired dancers, expensive custom-made favors, massive guest lists, catered dinners, the works. Cannie thinks these bat mitzahs teach bad values and is determined to make Joy's more traditional. Joy, of course, wants a spaghetti-strap dress and a theme like all of her friends. She also worries about the family involvement portion of it: she has three grandmothers, no grandfathers, two dads and her mom. How is she going to work everyone in? Will there be a lot of tension between her biological dad and her mom? Which of the three grandmothers will have to sit out? Can she maybe produce a grandfather after all, and find out for herself why he's not in her life? She spends most of the book doing a lot of 007 stuff to get the dress she wants, and to find out for herself which portions of her mother's book are truth and which are fiction.

Many of the other supporting characters from the earlier book make an appearance. Cannie's little sister Lucy (now Elle) is back, as is her brother. Their mother is back with a new "life partner" and Cannie's friend Samantha is also back. There are even cameos by Cannie's evil dad, Winona-I-mean-Maxi Ryder, and the Ever Tasteful Audrey (Nifkin, sadly, is seen only in Cannie's memory, having since departed to the Great Dog Park In The Sky. They did get another dog though). It was an enjoyable read, but it tried to do too much. The book would have been much better off without the baby subplot, which never fully gelled. Samantha's scenes felt as superfluous as ever, whereas Lucy/Elle's moments onstage made you want to see more of her.

Last week, for the "Coupling" BTT post, I said that a lot of novels about relationships are one-sided, with the partner standing in for happiness and self-actualization. I was actually thinking of Good in Bed, because Cannie is so interesting and vivid, and both Peter and her ex-boyfriend Bruce are shadowy and ill-defined. This seems more true after reading Cannie's happily-ever-after tale. Peter remains mostly in the shadows as a "wonderful man" who's always there for moral support and idyllic family outings and never makes any real demands, except for the bit about the baby, which never got off the ground as a driving force in the book's plot. In Little Earthquakes and Goodnight Nobody, Weiner has proven that she can write about the challenges of marriage, as the women deal with everything from a possessive mother-in-law to their own personal unhappiness. Cannie and Peter don't even have issues over who takes out the trash, and it made their relationship less real. But the mother-daughter stuff is worth coming for, as well as Elle/Lucy's too-infrequent scenes. It's still not her best book, but Cannie was well-loved by many, and I'm sure her fans are pleased to know how she turned out.

Part of a Sisterhood: A Long-Standing TBR gets vanquished at last

Every time I go, I check. It's never there. It led me to speculate that the library didn't even carry it, until I looked it up one day and learned that even though it's almost ten years old, it remains that damn popular. But this time, there it was on the shelf. I picked it up. The cover was faded and battered, and the protective plastic pitted with sand. The pages were stained with coffee, and the binding is on the verge of giving way. Everything about this book said it had been loved by women in my area since the library purchased it, and I was next.

The book I'm speaking of is Good In Bed by Jennifer Weiner. It's one of those books that helped put chick lit -- books by women, for women -- on the map, and after spending an enjoyable day and a half with it, I can see why. Weiner skillfully blends realism with fantasy in the book, so that you can both identify with her heroine Cannie and look up to her at the same time. So that you hurt when she hurts, cheer when things go her way, laugh along with her. So that you close the book feeling like you can attain your dreams just like she did.

The title of the book refers to her ex-boyfriend's new magazine column. Cannie spent three years with Bruce, during which time he barely worked at all, but magically managed to land a job writing the guy's perspective for a women's magazine. And the first column was all about her. "Loving a Larger Woman" was its title, and although she's initially angry and embarassed enough to throw a box of tampons at his head, upon re-read, it's so sweet that she decides she wants him back.

People like this book for Cannie. She's eminently likeable: smart, funny, confident, and working hard to overcome a sad past. Her parents were divorced when she was a teenager, and her dad abandoned the family, popping up periodically just long enough to hurt her. I was pleased to see this issue get treatment in a book, since it will statistically affect at least half of all women Cannie's age (if she was a real person, she'd be 37 or 38 now). The rest of her family is pretty interesting: her sister is a wild child, and her mother is now living with a woman who none of them care for. Cannie is also a size sixteen, and yet she has a good job, friends, and a love life, which made her a hit with the millions of women that are not size four and blond.

Yet, at the same time, it caters well to readers' fantasies. Cannie also becomes friends with a famous movie actress, meets her celebrity friends and sells a screenplay. The ending (which I won't spoil) involves the best type of revenge on her ex. And although things are hard, everything does essentially end up working out.

There are some minor inconsistancies in the book, mostly having to do with character. They're nitpicky, but still annoyed me. At one point, Cannie reflects on lifestyle changes entailed by her impending motherhood by realizing that she won't be able to buy a $200 pair of boots whenever she wants anymore, yet at another point in the book, she confides that she gets her hair done at the local beauty school. Bruce has worked very little in his adult life, yet manages to go from being an unemployed slacker to a featured magazine columnist, while Cannie's years of hard journalistic work hasn't even allowed her to become the head of her department at the newspaper? When Cannie's partying with a celebrity in L.A., she states that her wildest nights generally consist of ice cream and books, yet at other points in the novel, she talks about staying out late with her girlfriends and drinking. Stuff like that -- nitpicky to mention, but they add up.

However, they're not enough to overwhelm a generally favorable impressiong. The book has aged pretty well, unlike some of the other chick lit books which are riddled with brand names and pop culture references. I like Jennifer Weiner a lot, and although her writing's definitely evolved since this book, I still recommend it if you haven't yet seen where it all started for her.