Certain Girls: A Novel

Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed who found her happy ending after her mother came out of the closet, her father fell out of her life, and her ex-boyfriend started chronicling their ex-sex life in the pages of a national magazine.

Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel — a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life — became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable — knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy's drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.

As preparations for Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception — the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy.

Radiantly funny and disarmingly tender, with Weiner's whip-smart dialogue and sharp observations of modern life, Certain Girls is an unforgettable story about love, loss, and the enduring bonds of family.

"Following the story collection The Guy Not Taken, Weiner turns in a hilarious sequel to her 2001 bestselling first novel, Good in Bed, revisiting the memorable and feisty Candace 'Cannie' Shapiro. Flashing forward 13 years, the novel follows Cannie as she navigates the adolescent rebellion of her about-to-be bat mitzvahed daughter, Joy, and juggles her writing career; her relationship with her physician husband, Peter Krushelevansky; her ongoing weight struggles; and the occasional impasse with Joy's biological father, Bruce Guberman. Joy, whose premature birth resulted in her wearing hearing aids, has her own amusing take on her mother's overinvolvement in her life as the novel, with some contrivance, alternates perspectives. As her bat mitzvah approaches, Joy tries to make contact with her long absent maternal grandfather and seeks more time with Bruce. In addition, unbeknownst to Joy, Peter has expressed a desire to have a baby with Cannie, which means looking for a surrogate mother. Throughout, Weiner offers her signature snappy observations: ('good looks function as a get-out-of-everything-free card') and spot-on insights into human nature, with a few twists thrown in for good measure. She expends some energy getting readers up to speed on Good, but readers already involved with Cannie will enjoy this, despite Joy's equally strong voice." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"When I got the call to review 'Certain Girls,' the long-awaited sequel to Jennifer Weiner's best-selling 'Good in Bed,' my first thought was that I wasn't Weiner-worthy. I was about a decade behind in my reading (though completely up-to-date on my television-watching) and had never read her hugely popular first novel. But once I'd caught up, I knew that Jane Smiley's dismissive review of 'the pinkest... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) book you can imagine' — in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the paper Weiner herself used to write for — was funny enough in a bitterly ironic way to be something right out of one of Weiner's novels.

Smiley thinks it's a shame that Weiner doesn't 'address larger questions than the psychological ups and downs of her nice Jewish characters,' but to me there are few things larger, not to mention more interesting and entertaining, than the psychological ups and downs of nice Jewish characters, especially the ones Weiner writes about. Her rabid fans — more than 9 million copies of her books are in print worldwide — clearly agree and have been devouring her stories about women who wear double-digit-size clothes and are in various stages of love or heartbreak or marriage or motherhood since 2001, with no sign of stopping. Weiner's women — witty, wisecracking and weight-watching — feel familiar, and entering and turning the pages of their lives as they cook chickens or take to their big, comfortable, 400-thread-count sheeted beds while they figure out what they're going to do next is almost as easy as walking into our own kitchens and bedrooms: We've been here before, and we're glad to be back.

It's 12 years later for Cannie Shapiro, and certain things have changed: She's now married to Peter Krushelevansky, the obesity doctor she fell in love with at the end of 'Good in Bed,' and her baby, Joy, isn't a baby anymore, even if Cannie hasn't quite accepted that fact. Other things haven't changed: She's still plus-size, she's still raking in the royalties from her racy roman a clef, 'Big Girls Don't Cry,' which she wrote after getting dumped by Joy's father, and she's still a product of her own father's callous rejection. The snippy quips, the smarty-pants attitude, the relentless humor and repartee are the acquired tics and telltale signs of big girls who cry when no one's looking. Only now Cannie is a kinder, gentler version of herself: She's a mother to a bat-mitzvah-age girl who wears hearing aids (the result of premature birth), and she lives to protect her daughter from the unseemly book she once wrote and from the world's ambient pain and cruelty:

'I was pretty certain, at thirteen, that I had more in common with the bow-wows (on the wedding announcements page) than the beautiful brides, and I was positive that the worst thing that could happen to any woman would be winning that contest. Now, of course, I know better. The worst thing would not be a couple of superannuated pranksters on a ratings-challenged radio station oinking at your picture and depositing dog food at your door. The worst thing would be if they did it to your daughter.'

Fortunately for Cannie, Joy Shapiro Krushelevansky has 'the kind of body I always figured was available only thanks to divine or surgical intervention,' and fortunately for us, Weiner tells the story from both the mother's and daughter's perspectives in alternating chapters. Joy, who used to think she was special, 'in a good way, like my mother used to tell me,' has since learned she is not, which is fine, since all she really wants is to be normal, one of those 'certain girls' to whom looks and personality come impossibly easily. But she has two fathers, a gay grandmother and a smothering mother, who 'would never, ever forget me. Not even for twenty minutes. Probably not even for twenty seconds.' And she knows that the only reason she's been invited to the bat mitzvah of Amber Gross, the most popular girl in school, is because of Cannie's book and brush with fame. Determined, in between shopping for the perfect bat mitzvah dress, to separate the fact from the fiction in her mother's life, and in her own, Joy begins the inevitable process of separation that drives their relationship to a different and ultimately better place.

In the emotional core of the book, Weiner portrays with tear-jerking precision both the long, dark shadows of a painful childhood and the excruciatingly small window of blissful closeness that parents get to enjoy with their kids before they grow up and start to know better. Weiner, who in interviews talks about growing up Jewish in a non-Jewish Connecticut town, dealing with her own parents' divorce and being plus-size herself, is a self-professed outsider, and it's that nose-pressed-up-against-the-glass quality that gives her writing such a punch. It's what makes her wish-fulfillment, happy-ending plots forgivable, and it's what makes 'Certain Girls' the kind of book that gets under your skin, reminding you what it felt like to listen to your friend snap her retainer in the dark during a sleepover when you were 13 and capturing exactly what it feels like now, watching your child grow away from you and praying that someday she comes back."

Reviewed by Laura Zigman, who is the author of 'Animal Husbandry' and 'Piece of Work,' among other novels, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"Weiner is a talented writer who consistently delivers the goods." Library Journal

"A touching examination of both the comic and tragic moments that mark the mother-daughter relationship." Kirkus Reviews

"The overlapping narratives ramble agreeably for a couple hundred pages, until Weiner seems to realize the book actually has to go somewhere....Best not to invest too deeply in the tatty plotting, and just enjoy the charisma of Cannie's earthy and mature female voice. (Grade: B)" Entertainment Weekly

"Weiner delivers the heartbreaking goods even if getting there is not as satisfying....Certain Girls is most apt to please fans of Good In Bed. Otherwise, it's just — OK in bed." USA Today

"In comparison to Good In Bed, the pinkness of the novel implies to me that Weiner herself has given up seeking a wider audience, and so given up developing her fictional premises from lots of different perspectives." Jane Smiley, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Weiner hasn't lost her touch with Cannie or with sharp writing that both touches and amuses. I'm very glad Cannie is back." San Antonio Express-News

"A good read, if a bit predictable." Rocky Mountain News

The long-awaited sequel to the bestselling novel Good in Bed picks up with the beloved Cannie Shapiro, who is now older, wiser, and (seven pounds) thinner, and raising her lovely, rebellious 13-year-old daughter, Joy.

Jennifer Weiner is the author of Good in Bed. She lives with her family in Philadelphia.