Good In Bed — Jennifer Weiner
So it turns out that even though I’ve been busy with work and landscaping, and I fully expected to take a couple more days to finish this book, I just couldn’t put it down. Consequently, I picked it up in the late evening and read until 2 AM because I had to finish it. Even when my husband set up the VCR with episodes of Smallville we had taped while we were busy working in the yard, I read this book with only partial awareness of what was going on in the shows. It’s actually taken me more time to write this review than it did to read the book.
Jennifer Weiner has written another great book. The main character, Candace (Cannie) Shapiro, is fantastic. She’s an overweight woman who has decided to take a break from her relationship with her slacker boyfriend, Bruce. Even though she said they’re taking a break, he’s taken the “break” and added “up” to the end and he’s not happy about it. Maybe for some revenge, maybe to heal his ego, or maybe just because he’s an opportunistic jerk, he’s used details from their three-year relationship as fodder for a new column called “Good In Bed” that he’s been contracted to write for a women’s magazine. His columns reveal personal, intimate and embarrasing details about her, and horrified Cannie is feeling like life can’t get any worse, until she discovers she’s pregnant with his child and he wants nothing to do with it or with her. As Cannie progresses along in her pregnancy, she’s forced to look to a future of being a single mom, and living life as a “larger woman” to boot.
This is a great book. Weiner is very witty and there are laugh-out-loud moments sprinkled throughout the book, balanced with somber and very realistic forays into the harsh world of depression. The development of Cannie’s character is very good, and I liked her more and more as the book progressed. I found I was feeling a lot of the things she felt at certain points in her life. When she was upset about something, I was upset for her as well. When she managed to get some vindication, I wanted to cheer for her. Her interaction between certain characters is so realistic I felt like Weiner had been a fly on the wall in my own life taking notes so she could sprinkle the experiences in her stories. I recognized myself in this character.
This novel is full of themes about abandonment, self-esteem, and relationship issues. The only issues I have with the book were the poor editing, and the fact that it ended too abruptly. I didn’t feel the story had been played out enough for me in the end. Maybe Weiner did it on purpose to leave the door open for a sequel about Cannie. I would like to read more about her, so I hope she considers it.
[...] Bruce Guberman, Cannie’s boyfriend from Weiner’s novel Good In Bed, is out on a stag night with a group of his friends to celebrate their friend Neil’s last few days as a bachelor. The men do the typical stag activities, hiring the stripper and drinking way too much, but towards the end of the night, they begin to discuss love and marriage and how a man knows when it’s time to pop the question. The conversation is turned onto Bruce’s relationship with Cannie, someone he’s been dating for a long while, and Bruce is asked why he hasn’t asked Cannie to marry him yet. Bruce replies that he doesn’t like Cannie’s dog, Nifkin. The men figure, with their drunken logic, that if Nifkin is the only reason keeping them from getting married, they ought go to Cannie’s apartment and steal Nifkin and release him into the wild where he belongs so Bruce won’t have to live with him. As Bruce enters Cannie’s apartment and calls for Nifkin, he sees Cannie sleeping soundly in bed and begins to think about all the things that he loves about her, from her humor to the way she spoils her dog, and it is at that moment he realises just how much he loves her and that he really doesn’t have a good reason for not asking her to marry him, so he will. [...]
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