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Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
Jul. 29th, 2006 12:36 pmFiction, species chicklit. Snarky, plus-sized heroin deals with life and love and all that. There's a fair amount to criticize here -- the vast over reliance
on coincidence as a literary device, the unevenness of an author who started out to write a funny book and then realized halfway through that she had more
here to work with so maybe she should get a little serious. But that's just the thing, there's more here to work with. The endnotes to this book explained
a lot of my more spectacular eye roll moments; this is a first novel, and initially conceived as autobiography with a twist of what-if. Which pretty much
explains everything, right down to that indecisive hovering between writing the everywoman book and the escapist "don't you wish this happened to you?" book. But for all that? The writing is great. No, really, it's quick and funny and poignant and fundamentally good. There's a current of something alive and crackling and real through this book which carried me over the more amateur mistakes with only a few bumps. Weiner has published three novels since
this first one, and I intend to read them in chronological order. She's good, and I suspect she could be excellent and that she might be, with practice.
on coincidence as a literary device, the unevenness of an author who started out to write a funny book and then realized halfway through that she had more
here to work with so maybe she should get a little serious. But that's just the thing, there's more here to work with. The endnotes to this book explained
a lot of my more spectacular eye roll moments; this is a first novel, and initially conceived as autobiography with a twist of what-if. Which pretty much
explains everything, right down to that indecisive hovering between writing the everywoman book and the escapist "don't you wish this happened to you?" book. But for all that? The writing is great. No, really, it's quick and funny and poignant and fundamentally good. There's a current of something alive and crackling and real through this book which carried me over the more amateur mistakes with only a few bumps. Weiner has published three novels since
this first one, and I intend to read them in chronological order. She's good, and I suspect she could be excellent and that she might be, with practice.
