yenfur's Full Review: Jennifer Weiner - Good In Bed
After receiving a gift certificate from Amazon.com, I purchased Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed. It seemed like a fun book, plus the idea of a plus sized heroine is always appealing. Plus, I got the book for a really good price. So I read it all in a day (I am a really fast reader). After reading it, I had quite a few opinions, which I just had to share. I was hoping that this would be some tale of female empowerment, and it wasn’t.
First the basic info…
Cannie Shapiro is a writer (the quintessential femme novel profession). She’s fat (size 16, some people consider that a hippo. Some people think that is rather thin). Either way, she has some issues. Her father abandoned her family during her teenage years. Her mother is a “later in life” lesbian, with a partner that Cannie hates. And worst of all, her ex-boyfriend Bruce (whom she originally thought she was simply taking a break from) has started writing a magazine column about his love life, to which Cannie plays a prominent role. In fact, his first article was entitled “Loving a Larger Woman.”
Ouch.
Then a bunch of stuff happens. Explaining it in a logical chain of events isn’t possible, because it’s jumpy. There are matters to do with love, weight loss and other personal stuff. We can just say that there is a happy ending after it all.
I have to address my many problems with this book, simply because there were a lot of problems that I had. Before I say anything, I am well aware that this is a novel. Novels aren’t necessarily realistic, but at the same time, a book can have a certain degree of realism and still be fictional.
In all honesty, I hate black and white characters. “This person is good, like them. This person is bad, hate them.” That isn’t a sign of the best writer, simply because the situations which occur in this book are far from clear cut (life isn’t clear cut. Or you’re in an action movie). To me, the entire treatment of Bruce as a character was just “he’s bad,” when in all honesty, he didn’t do anything all that horrible until the latter part of the novel. No, it was not the best thing to write about your sex life in a magazine, but the original “Loving the Larger Woman” column wasn’t all that bad (you get to read the article in its entirety in the book). What Bruce was guilty of was pointing out what Cannie hated about herself the most. Is that fair? Is that mature? Is that right? Not necessarily, but I honestly think that the original essay said some sweet and genuine things. And because he refused to get back together with someone who “took a break,” he was seen as a bad guy. To me, that character development was truly weak and what happened didn’t quite make sense.
For the first part of the book, I loved the character of Cannie. I mean, I can relate to being bigger and all the self image problems that come with it. There are some unrealistic body images out there, and some women genuinely see themselves as whales. Cannie is among them. But then Cannie becomes one of those people who has everything good happen to them. Now that’s all good, but that is not going to make people relate. Most insecure fat women are not going to randomly befriend a movie star one drunken night and have that person help propel them to everything that they wanted. It doesn’t happen like that. The more and more the book went on, the more and more I started to dislike Cannie. If I want a character I can relate to, I actually have to relate.
The book also deals with a lot of issues. It is only 386 pages, but with all the issues dealt with, it could have been a five book series (and I don’t mean that in a good way). Plus, in some parts, Cannie goes in and out of a dream state, which is not clearly specified, which just makes it seem like there are more issues. Needless to say, a lot goes unresolved by the end.
The most bothersome unresolved fact is that Cannie, after all of her hatred with her body, never really comes to terms with it as much as I would have liked to see. She ended up losing 40 pounds (for reasons the reader won’t expect), and she was gaining it back. But this resolution was a paragraph, when it was the underlying theme of the entire story.
Another big fat unresolved issue was her relationship with Bruce, which was a big deal. The ending that the author gave that relationship was basically worthless and left me asking “that’s it?” Of course it was with Bruce being the bad guy. As a reader, the character from beginning to end made no sense.
The positive…the diction was good.
No, actually, there were a couple of parts which I enjoyed. I found some parts of the book absolutely hilarious. Cannie’s mishaps were truly enjoyable to read about. Personal melodrama is funny, and I found myself rooting for the main character when she was having problems. Not when she was succeeding, but the problems she had made me laugh. It was almost enough to make me like the character, but not quite.
While there were some charming things about Jennifer Weiner’s book, Good in Bed isn’t really that good. Cannie Shapiro seems like she is going to be a great heroine, but just ends up another Little Miss Perfect. Clear cut characters make what could have been a really good story dreadfully average.
The Barnes & Noble Review From first-time novelist Jennifer Weiner comes a sharp-witted tale of one woman's struggle to come to terms with her larger-...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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