Good in Bed (56 page)

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Good in Bed
would not have been possible without my brilliant, patient, and devoted agent, Joanna Pulcini, who plucked Cannie from obscurity, cleaned her up, and found her a home. I'm grateful to Liza Nelligan's careful reading and good advice. I also thank my editor, Greer Kessel Hendricks, whose keen eye and invaluable suggestions made this a much better book.

Thanks to Greer's assistant, Suzanne O'Neill, and Joanna's assistant, Kelly Smith, who answered a thousand questions and held my hand.

Thanks to Linda Michaels and Teresa Cavanaugh, who helped Cannie see the world, and Manuela Thurner, the German translator of
Good in Bed
, who caught a dozen discrepancies and learned the meaning of Tater Tot.

From elementary school through college, I was gifted with teachers who believed in me, and in the power of words: Patricia Ciabotti, Marie Miller, and most especially John McPhee.

I work with, and have learned from, the best people in the business at
The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Thanks to Beth Gillin, editor extraordinaire, and Gail Shister, Jonathan Storm, Carrie Rickey, Lorraine Branham, Max King, and Robert Rosenthal.

Thanks to my friends, who inspired me and amused me, especially Susan Abrams, Lisa Maslankowski (for the medical advice), Bill Syken, Craig and Elizabeth LaBan, and Scott Andron. Thanks to my sister Molly, my brothers Jake and Joe, and my grandmother Faye Frumin, who always believed in me, and my mother, Frances Frumin Weiner, who still can't believe it. Thanks to Caren Morofsky, for being a very good sport.

Thanks to my muse, Wendell, King of All Dogs.

And finally, thanks to Adam Bonin, first reader and traveling companion, who made the journey worthwhile.

About the Author

JENNIFER WEINER
is the #1
New York Times
bestselling author of nine books, including
Good in Bed, In Her Shoes,
which was made into a major motion picture, and
Then Came You.
A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Philadelphia with her family. To learn more, visit
www.jenniferweiner.com
.

Atria Books/Simon & Schuster Author Page
authors.simonandschuster.com/Jennifer-Weiner

Author's Website
www.jenniferweiner.com
jenniferweiner.blogspot.com

Facebook
facebook.com/JenniferWeiner?ref=ts

Twitter
twitter.com/jenniferweiner

About Atria Books

Atria Books was launched in April 2002 by publisher Judith Curr as a new hardcover and paperback imprint within Simon & Schuster, Inc. The name Atria (the plural of
atrium
—a central living space open to the air and sky) reflects our goals as publishers: to create an environment that is always open to new ideas and where our authors and their books can flourish. We look for innovative ways to connect writers and readers, integrating the best practices of traditional publishing with the latest innovations in the digital world. We are committed to publishing a wide range of fiction and nonfiction for readers of all tastes and interests.

The first book published under the Atria name,
The Right Words at the Right Time
by Marlo Thomas, became an instant #1
New York Times
bestseller, and since then Atria has gone on to publish more than 185 
New York Times
 bestsellers. Atria is the publishing home to many major bestselling authors including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jude Deveraux, Vince Flynn, T.D. Jakes, Shirley MacLaine, Kate Morton, Jodi Picoult, Sister Souljah, Brad Thor, Jennifer Weiner, Lauren Weisberger, Zane, and Rhonda Byrne, author of the international bestsellers
The Secret
and
The Power.

In recent years, the imprint has placed a strategic emphasis on publishing for diverse audiences through the acquisition of the African American–oriented press Strebor Books, the launch of Atria Books Español, and co-publishing agreements with Beyond Words Publishers and Cash Money Records. Atria Books also publishes literary fiction and topical nonfiction in trade paperback under the Washington Square Press imprint, and popular fiction and nonfiction under the Emily Bestler Books imprint, launched in 2011.  

Atria—books that entertain and enlighten.

JENNIFER WEINER

A Readers Club Guide

Q: Many authors say that it is much harder to write comedy than tragedy. Do you agree? What are the challenges of blending humor and drama? Why do you suppose “comic” and “sliceof-life” novels, no matter how well crafted and accomplished, are generally perceived as separate from the “serious” literary canon?

A:
I can't speak to whether it's harder to write comedy or tragedy, or how to blend them effectively, because I think that most of what I've written just naturally wound up as a mixture of both. I've never tried to sit down and say, “Now I'll be writing a funny scene” or, “Okay, now I'm really going to give those heartstrings a yank.” It was just, “Now I'm going to sit down and tell this woman's story,” and the story encompassed both comedy and tragedy—just like all of our lives do—and frequently with them coming basically at the same time.

I will say that when the book was finally finished, my agent was trying to figure out whether it would appeal to more “literary” houses (the places that publish books by people who earn MFAs at Iowa and get their first short story published in
The New Yorker
) or “commercial” houses (Judith Krantz, Susan Isaacs et al.). The literary houses dropped out really fast—we got lots of “this is good, just not for us” comments. I'm not sure whether that had to do with the humor, or with the unfashionable fairy-tale ending, which is very different from
much of what I read in
The New Yorker,
where short stories seem to end with someone staring off at the white walls of a white room, and you think that something's happened but you're not quite sure what.

I agree that funny things aren't generally perceived as “literary” or “serious” these days, but I wrote
Good in Bed
as a story I was telling myself, and as the kind of book I wanted to read, and so far I'm thrilled with how it turned out, and with the way readers seem to respond to it.

Q: On the strength of its humor alone,
Good in Bed
is a great read. But Cannie's story is so much more than just an extended comic vignette. Tell us about the particular issues and themes you contend with in your portrait of Cannie and her journey as a single, urban woman.

A:
First and foremost, I think, is the theme of finding love, and of building a family of choice, even in the face of your own damaged history. For years, we've been reading the research about what divorce does to people, how they grow up wounded, or wanting, or in young women's cases, mistrustful of their idea to inspire lasting love. From my own life, I know how true that can be. Having a parent leave your life is one of the most devastating things I can imagine. I think, in a way, it's worse than having a parent die, or be sick, because those are things outside of the person's control, whereas divorce is a choice, and it feels like the most devastating kind of rejection—that person could have stayed, but chose not to, ergo, there must be something wrong with me. So divorce is rough, but part of Cannie's journey is growing past that pain, and learning that there is the possibility of love in her life, no matter what messages her father gave her, no matter what messages the culture sends.

The second theme is equally important—the notion of growing up and picking your own family, of finding good friends and making them your brothers and your sisters. Cannie has her best friend, and her little dog, and Maxi, who plays the role of a fairy godmother. She has her mother, and Tanya (for better or worse!), and her sister and her brother. One of the most poignant and powerful images for me is of
Joy's naming ceremony, when Cannie gathers her loved ones under the chuppah. The chuppah, of course, is more commonly found at Jewish weddings, where it shelters your basic nuclear family—the bride and the groom, his mother and father, her mother and father. In Cannie's case, I wanted to reinvent that image, and have the chuppah sheltering everyone she's chosen to bring into her life, and into her daughter's life, to signify that a family can be more than the people you're biologically connected to—it can include everyone you've chosen to love.

Q: It's so refreshing to read a novel that features a “larger” woman as the central character—not just the comic-relief sidekick to the lithesome ingénue. And even better, it doesn't end with Cannie dropping seven dress sizes and achieving blissful contentment as a result. Was part of your reason for writing this to fill the void on the bookshelves for stories like these?

A:
One of the great frustrations in my life as a reader has been the paucity of characters who look like me. There are books where the characters start off plus-size, but, through some miracle of fiction, some deus ex machina of a diet, end up skinny by the end of the book (for example, She's Come Undone—one of my favorites!). There are plenty of books where the characters think they're fat, but aren't (like Bridget Jones's Diary), and spend time obsessing anyhow. But I'd never, ever read a book where the character was plus-size, or “larger,” or festively plump, or fat, or insert-your-favorite-euphemism-here, and ended up happy without ending up thin. I'd never read a book that really expressed the reality of what it's like to live in a larger-than-average body. My experience has been this: Sure, there's misery involved in not looking like a
Friends
cast member, because that's what the world expects of women. Like Cannie, I've certainly put in my time as a foot soldier in the body wars. Like Cannie, I've lived with envy, and the understanding that my body makes me an outsider, a de facto rebel in a world where women are expected to either be thin, or to be trying desperately, unceasingly, to get that way. Like Cannie, I've suffered with the culture that never shows women who look like me unless
they're desperately trying to look some other way, or when they're there for comic relief (I quit watching
Friends
after I flipped it on one night and was thrilled for an instant to see a character who looked like me. “Finally!” I said … and then I realized it was Courteney Cox in a fat suit during a flashback).