"Good in Bed" - Oy vay!

I read Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner because the premise is similar to my own novel. They are both about women, who happen to be larger than "normal" and find themselves "exposed in print," so to speak.


Good in Bed stars Candace (Cannie) Shapiro. She's in her late twenties and works as an entertainment reporter for a large Philly newspaper but is living in the shadow of the out-of-touch entertainment columnist, Gabby. Basically, Cannie does the work and Gabby gets the glory.

Cannie, we discover, has decided to "take a break" from her relationship with Bruce Guberman, a shiftless (his parents are rich) but likable man who, through the numerous flashbacks in the story, seemed to be truly in love with Cannie. Until she opted for a break.

You don't have to be in a lot of relationships to know that men can turn off from a relationship between heartbeats, or that men express their feelings differently. Bruce Guberman is like many men I've seen or known who will, stoically, give a woman what she wants even if it hurts.


He and Cannie split up and he sees it as a permanent arrangement. Not like I can blame him. I never could accept the "let's take a break" line as a legitimate reason to test the strength of a relationship. However, Cannie really believes that she simply needed a break from him.


Bruce then goes on to chronicle the highs and lows of their now-defunct relationship as a columnist for Moxie magazine in a series of confessional articles where he refers to Cannie as "C." The name of the column? Good in Bed.


Understandably, Cannie is livid, humiliated as the first article, "Loving a Larger Woman," splashes on the mag's pages. We learn (along with Cannie's family and friends) that it was her experience in the bedroom that will serve Bruce well in future relationships. As the novel is from Cannie's point-of-view in first-person narrative, we get to know her feelings for Bruce. He qualities range from loving and vulnerable to sloppy pot-head who can't lift the toilet seat up or down depending on which is most inconvenient to the woman at the time.


Unlike Cannie, I don't see Bruce as a totally bad guy. In fact, other characters see his good and bad points, but on the whole seem to like him. If anything, he's a bit reckless and insensitive with his literary scribblings and needs to grow up.


Through Cannie, Weiner does an excellent job conveying the range of emotions that can come with being a larger woman. Not only that, but Cannie has some queen-size issues to deal with in regards to love and relationships, such as a father who abandoned her and the rest of the family without shame and a mother who eventually replaces him with her new lover--Tanya. You see Cannie take some of this hostility out on Bruce, and he takes it. Cannie realizes that, although not perfect, Bruce is a good guy but she let him get away.


Now we come to a part of the story that started to make me look askance. Cannie starts a campaign to win Bruce back and it's disturbing how obsessive she gets and the ultimate, life-changing reprocussions that come. I wanted to shout to her: "Yo, Cannie! Big girls get dumped on by friends, family, and strangers all the time and it's unfair. Life is unfair. You can't wallow in self pity forever. Goddammit! Pull up your big-girl panties and deal!"


I wanted Cannie to listen to her best friend, Samantha, and just move on. But then, this would probably be a short story rather than a novel. Then, Bruce's father dies suddenly. Granted, Cannie loved Bruce's father but she uses the event of the funeral as part of her campaign to get him back:


"But even though I was feeling horrible, I felt a spark growing. He'll get it now...I imagined us at the funeral, and how I'd hold his hand, how I'd help him, hold him up..."


WTF?


It's all well and good wanting to be there to show support to an ex whom you still have feelings for, but it's much, much different to go to a man's funeral to win back the affections of the grieving son. Talk about hitting a person when they are vulnerable! Nope. I'm sorry, but I can't swallow that (no pun intended).


Well, things don't turn out as planned, but Cannie and Bruce do fall into bed, and he's quicker than Cannie to realize that was a mistake.


This is where my admiration for Cannie changes and she comes to resemble the idea that every big woman is so desperate to have someone love them that she will make some dumb-ass choices. Not like big women have the monopoly on dumb-ass choices, but stereotypically, we're more prone to do so in order to have somebody--anybody--tell us they love us.

As you can imagine the result of unplanned sex, you get an unplanned pregnancy. After some soul searching, she decides to keep it, and after even more soul searching, she decides that Bruce has the right to know and she writes him a letter. To his discredit, he doesn't reply.


Meanwhile, the "Good in Bed" articles show Bruce is moving on with a new love, but Cannie remains fixated on him. Her smart friend Samantha asks if this is a way for her to keep a part of Bruce. She denies this but eventually she does use this, and Bruce's general immaturity, to blame him for her misfortune.


. . . Sigh . . . The last time I looked, it still takes two to tango and she did have an ulterior motive the last time she saw him.


The rest of the story shows Cannie's star on the rise, both professionally and romantically, but she's too blind to really appreciate it because she is on a crusade to get sympathy and convince the world that Bruce is the jerk for "leaving her" and the baby and making her miserable.


Cannie is an unreliable narrator, which I found to be tiresome. Then, when something really bad happens to her, I can't muster any sympathy.

No doubt Cannie has and will appeal to a lot of people, but I can't say that I'm one of them. I do like her humor and sass and the way she, normally, rebounds, but there's too much self-pity ("Oh, no one loves a fat girl") and selfishness ("YOU did this to me!) on her part that she doesn't really seem to overcome. If she did, it was grudgingly--and I missed it.

Nevertheless, I like Weiner's writing and this book has moments that are laugh-out-loud funny as well as heartbreaking. There were times when I really sympathized with Cannie, but those moments dwindled as the story progressed.

The edition of the novel I have has a quote saying 'Do not read on trains--as you will miss your stop.' I must say that this is true and likely to happen because you will get engrossed in it. But this edition also has the first chapter of the next novel featuring Cannie, Certain Girls, which promises to cover even more sticky-tricky situations. Although it sounds intriguing, I don't think I can muster enough patience to follow Cannie through it.

But hey, in the end, I give Good in Bed 3 out of 5 latkes and will try my luck with another of Weiner's books.

Got a book you'd like me to read or want to post your own views about a book in this blog? Contact me at zwb70(at)yahoo.com