mjtriplett's Full Review: Jennifer Weiner - Good In Bed
This review pertains to the audio book version of Good In Bed.
I realize that I have found Jennifer Weiner’s first novel, Good In Bed a little past its 2002 release date, but in all fairness, the audio version didn’t come out until 2005 and I didn’t enter the fascinating realm of chick lit until earlier this year. So there you have it. Yes, I’d love to curl up with a good book anytime, but if you’ve read my previous reviews, you know that I really only have time to “read” in the car and since I don’t want to cause the next 15 car pile up on crappy Twin Cities freeways, I stick to listening to stories for now. Chick lit is prime material for listening, because it’s light, doesn’t require a whole lot of thought, and it often makes me feel like I’m just chatting with some girlfriends in the car. In this case, I was “treated” to the complicated but common-sense and funny but still sobering renderings concerning the life of my newest girlfriend, Cannie Shapiro.
Cannie has major self-esteem issues, as do many women that I know. She’s overweight, she’s not current with the latest trends, she lives alone with her dog after recently “taking a break” from her relationship with Bruce Guberman, and she carries a lot of emotional baggage from her father leaving the family. All of those issues can really take a toll on a single woman in her late 20s, but what really puts a damper on Cannie’s life is her discovery of the content in Bruce’s latest magazine column: Good In Bed. According to Bruce, they must be on more than a break, because he had written all about his life with Cannie, or “C,” as he so cleverly disguised her identity, in a column entitled “Loving a Larger Woman.”
After Cannie (and everyone else in her world) reads the column, her life just seems to spiral out of control. She’s unhappy with her weight, but can’t stop eating for comfort. She alternates between hating Bruce and wanting him back because she fears no one else will ever be able to love her for who she is. She compares Bruce to her father, who dealt her the ultimate blow in life by abandoning Cannie, her mother, and her siblings while they were young. But under all her devastation lies a lot of promise, and Cannie forces herself to trudge on. She joins a weight-loss group, which she later learns she cannot participate in due to the delivery of another serious life blow. She unexpectedly makes friends with a popular celebrity and tries to come to terms with her mother’s gruff girlfriend. She even manages to drum up some interest in her very own screenplay.
Cannie is a typical chick lit protagonist: one who I was yelling at one minute and laughing with the next. She goes through realistic ups and downs in life, and although her read on things is a bit dramatic (ta-da: fiction!), it doesn’t take away from the story or from my wanting her to pull through and find the strong heroine hiding within her. The story is told from her point of view, so other characters are not well developed. Because of this, I never did get a sense of whether Bruce was just an idiot or an a**hole. I tend to prefer the books where the other characters play more than just a minor supporting role. Especially with the ending in this story, the lack of other character development really took away from the believability factor.
The book is read by Paula Cale, who does a nice job conveying the cynicism that Cannie carries with her through life. But her male voices left much to be desired and her voicing of Tanya, Cannie’s mother’s girlfriend, made her sound like she was suffering from perpetual laryngitis.
The book is funny as told from Cannie’s perspective, but she mostly uses humor to cover up her insecurities. Because it’s such a fast moving story, however, there is no dwelling on any of the quite heavy and depressing common woman’s problems that are brought out in Cannie’s character. Basically, she has a lot of problems, she works on some and lets others go, and all is well and good. If you’re looking for something deeper, it isn’t here.
Unfortunately, the Audio CD version of Good In Bed only comes in abridged format, meaning there are some parts missing and I am not certain which parts. It consists of 5 CDs with approximately 5 hours of listening time and can be purchased for $15.
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