Dear Readers,


I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Good in Bed


I adore Jennifer Weiner's blog, so I figured that her books must be good too. I decided to start with her debut, Good in Bed, which is about the love and life travails of a "larger" woman, Cannie, whose ex-boyfriend starts writing a sex column for a woman's mag--a humiliating, and incredibly brilliant, opening premise.

Supporting characters include Cannie's newly-gay mom + said mom's brilliantly acerbic partner, Cannie's dog, her serial-dater best friend, a Hollywood "it girl,"--oh yeah and Cannie's unintended pregnancy and her postpartum depression. What starts as a light romp ends up being a seriously touching book. It even jerked a few tears out of my cynical eyes (oh who are we kidding, I'm a sap!).

I definitely recommend Good in Bed: the book isn't formulaic. There's not much shopping to speak of and only a few margaritas.

So it's in the fine tradition of Bridget Jones but less whimsical: emotional, thoughtful, pop-culturally savvy, hilarious fiction about the interior and exterior lives of an urban, modern woman, proving that the whole "chick-lit" moniker has sexist overtones. If it were written by a guy it would be straight up literary fiction.

I've long been looking for the citified Jewish equivalent to Maeve Binchy's Irish charm and Anita Shreve's WASPy New England heatbreak.

Jennifer Weiner is it. Hooray!

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