Good In Bed: this is one seriously angry fat chick
Written: Aug 23 '06
Product Rating:
Pros: smart and successful plus-sized heroine
Cons: very angry and bitter plus-sized heroine
The Bottom Line: Good In Bed has nothing to do with being good in bed and everything to do with being so angry that you almost lose your mind. Skip it.
njchicaa's Full Review: Jennifer Weiner - Good In Bed
I had read Good In Bed several years ago and didn't remember much about it other than I didn't really like it. Having read Jennifer Weiner's other novels this summer and enjoying them, I decided to give her first book a second chance. Surely I would like it better this time, right?
The Premise Good In Bed follows the life of Cannie Shapiro, a 28-year old plus-sized journalist. She and her boyfriend, Bruce, have recently decided to "take a break" from their 3 year relationship. Her mother has recently discovered that she is homosexual and is living with another woman. Her father left many years ago and has no interest in Cannie or her life. You could say that she has a lot going on but she is pretty content with her life at the moment--after all, she and Bruce will probably work things out and maybe her mother's new girlfriend will fall off the face of the Earth.
And then she receives a phone call from a friend advising her to turn to page 132 of the most recent issue of Moxie magazine. Cannie's ex-boyfriend Bruce is the newest writer at Moxie and does a column called "Good In Bed". His first topic? "Loving A Larger Woman", a piece all about the difficulty of dating a plus-sized woman, specifically Cannie or C. as he calls her. His first sentence? I'll never forget the day I found out my girlfriend weighed more than I did." While the topic is a sore spot for Cannie, most of Bruce's column focuses on the fact that he loved her as she was even though society and Cannie herself did not.
Cannie is furious and humiliated because everyone she knows has read Bruce's column and knows that it is about her. They break up officially with an emotional and angry meeting, complete with Cannie flinging things at Bruce's head. She remains angry with Bruce for several weeks and then she starts to realize that she misses him. She is lonely and, well, Bruce loved her just the way she was. She eventually calls him and learns that Bruce's father has just died. Cannie is genuinely upset to hear this but also sees an opportunity to work her way back into Bruce's life. She attends the services for her would-be father-in-law and then joins the family back at their house. One thing leads to another and Bruce and Cannie are soon doing a lot more than just comforting one another. Afterward, Bruce basically kicks Cannie out of the house and avoids her phone calls.
Cannie soon learns that she is pregnant and decides to keep the baby. She writes a letter to Bruce to inform him of the situation and to give him the opportunity to decide if he wants to be involved. She never receives a response from him. She does, however, continue to "hear" from him in the form of his monthly column analyzing their former relationship in Moxie. She even gets to read about his new girlfriend and the progression of that relationship--but he never addresses the fact that C. is now pregnant.
And so Cannie goes through her pregnancy alone and with plenty of time to consider her father's abandonment, her mother's horrible new girlfriend, Bruce's immaturity, and, of course, her weight issues. She becomes angry about the way she's been treated by those who were supposed to love her. When something terrible happens involving her unborn child, Cannie's anger becomes pure and hateful rage. Will she act on it? Or will she be able to move past the past?
What I Liked About Good In Bed
First of all, I loved that the author centered the story around an overweight heroine. It was refreshing to read about a real character that was smart, funny, and a genuinely good person as opposed to the typical witty-but-pathetic fat sidekick usually included in so many books.
I also thought that having Bruce write a column about his relationship with Cannie was an interesting twist on handling a breakup. We still hear from the ex-boyfriend but not in angry phone calls or chance meetings. Cannie has the opportunity to learn more about and reflect on how Bruce felt about her without the drama of actually seeing him again.
The author's writing style is easy to read. She writes as if the main character is having a conversation with you. It is larger than most paperbacks you'll find on the shelf (375 pages) but it is a fairly fast read.
What I Didn't Like About Good In Bed
The title of this book has nothing to do with the actual story. If you were to look at the title and cover image of a woman's crossed legs, you'd think that Good In Bed is another trashy chick-lit book about single girls, drinking Cosmopolitans, and sex. The title comes from the name of Bruce's column in Moxie. That's it. I find the title of the book to be pretty misleading.
Probably the biggest problem I had with Good In Bed involves the character of Cannie. She spends most of the book either sad and depressed or angry and bitter. It quickly became tiresome to read about how much she missed Bruce or how much she hated Bruce. We finally have a smart, successful, and funny fat girl as the main character of a book and she spends most of her time being miserable. She's angry at her father for ignoring her, angry at her ex-boyfriend for moving on with his life, angry at the ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, angry at the world in general for the bad things that happen to her and to her baby. Cannie's rage almost destroys her and it makes for some tedious reading at times.
Cannie's sudden friendship with a world-famous movie star was very difficult for me to buy into. She meets Maxie when she is assigned to interview her but the actress quickly becomes a best friend and Fairy Godmother all rolled into one. Her encounter with Maxie would have been more believable to me if they had spent the day shopping and partying together and that was the end of it.
Overall Opinion
I have to say that I didn't enjoy Good In Bed the second time around much more than I did the first time I read it. The author starts out the book with a few brilliant chapters and then spends the rest of the time focusing on Cannie's hard luck, sad past, and delicate mental health. There were so many different paths that she could have chosen for such a promising heroine, but I think she selected one of the most difficult and angry plots that I have ever read. It was hard for me to believe that Good In Bed was written by the same author of In Her Shoes.
This book was my least favorite from Weiner so far. If you are looking for a good book by this author, choose anything else that she has written. She got off to a rocky start with Good In Bed.
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