Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner
Published: 2008 / 386 pp.
First paragraph: “When I was a kid, our small-town paper published wedding announcements, with descriptions of the ceremonies and dresses and pictures of the brides. Two of the disc jockeys at one of the local radio stations would spend Monday morning picking through the photographs and nominating the Bow-Wow Bride, the woman they deemed the ugliest of all the ladies who’d taken their vows in the Philadephia region over the weekend. The grand prize was a case of Alpo.”
Synopsis: (from book jacket) Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed who found her happy ending after her mother came out of the closet, her father fell out of her life, and her ex-boyfriend started chronicling their ex-sex life in the pages of a national magazine. Now Cannie’s back… She’s happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Perter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable — knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy’s drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.
Review: Well, I expected to love this latest offering from Weiner and I was not disappointed. Weiner alternates perspectives between Cannie and her teenaged daughter, Joy, and this is a great strength of the novel. Joy is a perfectly normal (i.e., miserable) adolescent who is desperately attempting to discover and define her identity — difficult for any teen.
Joy has the added challenge of reading her mother’s novel (loosely based on Good in Bed), and learning that her conception was an accident. Her subsequent pain and anguish is palpable, and, true to form, she exhibits her pain by being a royal pain in her mother’s butt, alternating between cold silence and edgy irritation. I couldn’t help but think of the many, many parents who sat across from me at parent-teacher conferences, bemoaning the fact that their formerly sweet, open kiddo is now a quiet, mysterious, sullen creature who barely emerges from his/her bedroom. Sigh…
Speaking of frustrated parents, poor Cannie is beside herself and perfectly befuddled about how to reconnect with Joy. Plus, her husband has decided they should attempt to have a child of their own, and they embark on the journey of surrogacy. And, if that is not enough, Cannie’s first novel — written in anger and bitterness – resurfaces and threatens to derail her pseudonym as well as her relationship with Joy.
So, I hope I haven’t given too much of the plot away… Honestly, the plot is interesting, but the true joy of this novel is the characterization and the deftness with which Weiner represents the horrors of adolescence and the helplessness all parents feel.
One regret — I wish I had reread Good in Bed before embarking on Certain Girls. I remembered loving it, but I wish I could’ve remembered more specific details for context. However, if you haven’t read Good in Bed yet, this will not diminish your enjoyment of Certain Girls.
Guess what I’ve started next? The Brothers Karamazov! One of my best customers requested a custom kit on this Russian classic so I am reading 50 pages a day (and loving it… seriously!). I may spend my Sunday Salon discussing the first couple hundred pages of this, or I may review one of the books that just arrived from the library: After Dark by Haruki Murakami and Ellington Boulevard by Adam Langer.
I’ll be keeping my eye out for this one – I really enjoyed Good in Bed – but will be sure to re-read it first!
Great review
Pingback: Re-gifting Certain Girls | BOOK CLUB CLASSICS!
Hi there! I’ve loved Weiner’s Good in Bed, In Her Shoes and Goodnight Nobody. They are always a fast, satisfying and fun read. Please enter me into the free Wednesday giveaway for Certain Girls!