This book is a treat for those of us who read Weiner’s Good In Bed, and want to revisit Cannie Shapiro and see what happened to her little baby girl, Joy. Picking up 12 years later, we discover that Joy has grown into a rebellious but smart young woman preparing for her bat mitzvah, and that Cannie and her husband Peter are preparing to have a baby via a surrogate. Due to Joy’s premature birth and health problems, Cannie has been super protective and extra attentive towards Joy as she’s grown up, which, for a 12 year old girl, means that Joy finds her mom stifling and such an embarrassment, something that only adds more to the insecurities of an awkward teen with hearing aids entering the trials and tribulations of the seventh grade social strata. So when Joy finds out that the popular girls at school read her mother’s book, Big Girls Don’t Cry, and suddenly think Joy is worthy of their attention, she decides to read her mother’s book as well to find out why.

What Joy discovers is that her mother’s book is largely autobiographical, and it portrays her mother as a promiscuous young woman who got pregnant by accident and never wanted the baby. Joy suddenly starts to question her existence and how much she is loved and wanted. Sigh… only a teenager could still wonder if a mother who drives her to and picks her up from school every day, asks after her, gives her pretty much everything she wants and says “I love you” constantly could actually really love and want her. I really think Weiner did a nice job of conveying the insecurities of young girls these days through Joy’s character.

Told in alternating points of view between Cannie and Joy, we are able to see how even the most loving, stable family can have their share of problems and secrets to shake things up from time to time. Families aren’t perfect. Mothers aren’t perfect. Children don’t turn out the way you hope they will, despite all the efforts. Sometimes there’s no such thing as “normal.” I really enjoyed this book and the relationships portrayed in it. I think I could have enjoyed it more if I had reread Good In Bed beforehand to refresh my memory of Cannie’s life pre-Joy, but the book stands well on its own. And while most of Weiner’s books tend to be on the lighter side, there are some pretty heavy themes in this novel; I think that since I recently became a mother myself, a lot of them hit home more emotionally than they would have pre-motherhood. A few tears were shed, and that’s not something chick lit tends to do to me. I suppose that’s why the official title of this book is Certain Girls: A Novel. I think Weiner hoped this novel would be taken more seriously and rise above the chick lit “bubble gum” eschewers, though the bright pink cover certainly wouldn’t help that cause.

In the end, I found this to be another good novel from a good writer.

Themes

Characters