1. With Good in Bed, Jennifer Weiner has garnered a lot of early praise for her alternately hilarious and poignant dialogue, and also for her pitch-perfect ear in rendering the conversational rhythms of Cannie's first-person narrative voice. Looking back through the novel, what is it about the dialogue that works so well? In what ways does it serve to subtly develop each character's motivations and idiosyncrasies?
The dialogue of this particular novel is what makes it an easy read. You feel as though you are Cannie's best friend, seeing into her life more so than her actual best friend in the novel, Sammantha. You feel like Bruce broke up with YOU...he called YOU fat. You literally step into Cannie's life and it is refreshing to escape from your own life to do so. Yes, Cannie has problems...(big problems- and no, that's not a pun). As I tried to figure out how Cannie felt, I realized I was actually figuring out how I felt. Overall, it really worked for Weiner to tell this story from Cannie's perspective.2. Discuss, in connection with the previous question, the specific tone and quality of Cannie Shapiro's voice. What techniques does Weiner employ to make Cannie's musings and descriptions come across so intimately? What sets the author's style apart from that of other contemporary authors? To which novelists would you say Weiner bears the closest comparison?
To put it simply, Weiner doesn't hold anything back. Cannie messes up just like we would. She speaks freely which is so refreshing. The vocabulary didn't require the reader to pick up a dictionary. She was a down-to-earth character with real-life issues/problems. Of the recent books I have read, Jennifer Weiner most closely resembles the work of Adena Halpern who wrote, "The Ten Best Days of My Life." Although I like Jennifer Weiner's work much better.3. Cannie Shapiro is, among other things, a woman struggling to emerge from the shadow cast by her father's emotional abuse and aggressive abandonment. How successful is she, finally, in doing so?
Throughout the novel, I felt as though Cannie never really played the "victim". She did not have "victim mentality" which was delightful to see. She goes through some pain. She holds onto the past. In the end, she forgives and moves on from her past. It is truly refreshing.4. In what ways do we see the painful legacy of Cannie's early relationship with her father (whom she dubs "the Original Abandoner") at work in the action of this novel, affecting the tenor of Cannie's relationships, choices, and/or motivations? To what degree can we view Bruce as a stand-in for her father?
When learning of her "abandonment" from her father, I felt as though Cannie was a typical person. She was not Cinderella nor a "wicked stepsister". She was a normal person with normal problems and normal outcomes. Some days were harder than others. I do not feel that Cannie will EVER abandon her daughter although when her daughter was in the hospital for such a long period of time, I felt like she abandoned her a bit. She also abandoned hope for her daughter. In the end, she learned how to live life without holding the past responsible for the future though. It ended well. As far as Bruce goes, I feel like Cannie actually abandoned Bruce before he abandoned her. It was a good lesson to learn. You cannot always get what you want when you want it. Cannie had to learn this the hard way. Bruce did not come back to her, even though she needed him badly. He abandoned the baby but he did not abandon Cannie.5. "Maybe," Bruce writes in his notorious Moxie debut, "it was the way I'd absorbed society's expectations, its dictates of what men are supposed to want and how women are supposed to appear. More likely, it was the way she had. C. was a dedicated foot soldier in the body wars....C. couldn't make herself invisible. But I know that if it were possible -- if all the slouching and slumping and shapeless black jumpers could have erased her from the physical world, she would have gone in an instant." With these lines, from the novel's opening chapter, Weiner begins to lay the framework for the larger themes that temper, texture, and lend weight to the comedy and romance propelling Cannie's story. What are these themes and issues, and how are they developed throughout the rest of the novel?
Accepting larger women, accepting yourself as a larger woman, depression and trying to disappear, and confidence and the lack thereof are the themes that I felt portrayed throughout the novel. In the beginning, we learn that Bruce noticed Cannie's lack of confidence in herself. She was a bright, successful person who didn't see anything in herself except a fat girl who could never be loved. She ends up going through quite a depression towards the end of the novel, which needed to happen in order for her to become the person that she could ultimately love herself and allow Dr. K to love in return. 6. The real-life specter of the Lewinsky-Clinton debacle looms in the background of this novel's fictional landscape. How does the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- and, more to the point, the witheringly cruel and petty reception that accompanied Lewinsky's emergence in media stories -- speak to the novel's portraits of male-female relationships in a body-obsessed culture?
I'm sure that I'm not the only one who thought, "What would a fat person NOT do in today's society to feel loved," when I heard of what Monica Lewinsky did with Bill Clinton. In today's society, larger women are looked down upon. I don't think it has anything to do with their confidence, their intellect, or whether or not they are well-off financially. Society cannot look past the fact that they are large. They automatically assume that they are lazy and just "do not care" about their bodies. That couldn't be farther from the truth. (At least in my perspective!) 7. How accurate is it to say that body fat has become, as Bruce writes in his column, "the only safe target in our politically correct world," the last "acceptable" object of societal prejudice? Where do we see this sort of prejudice at work? And in our advertising-drenched, consumer-driven society, where beauty and youth seem to be the chief signifiers of power and happiness, what are the implications and consequences of this prejudice?
It is EXTREMELY accurate to say that the last "acceptable" object of societal prejudice is based on how someone looks as far as body fat is concerned. Alot of companies offer "gym money" as a perk. They don't want someone "fat" representing their company. Fat=lazy and who would want to depend on a "lazy" person for anything in business? As far as the later part of this question- have you ever seen a "fat" person on the cover of any magazine unless it is making fun of them or commenting on how much weight someone had gained? I sure haven't.8. How do Cannie's understandings of and feelings about her mother's relationship with Tanya evolve over the course of this story?
This was a hard part for me to tolerate in the story. I have nothing against people who are gay, but when you are affecting a family including children, or dissolving a marriage to be with your "partner," that is when I have a problem with it. Cannie comes around in the end as far as tolerating Tanya and the relationship she has with her mother, but I still don't feel as though Cannie absolutely comes to terms with it and is just fine with everything. She will always have feelings of confusion when it comes to her mother. It is just life. I would react the same way- so I completely understand Cannie's position on the matter.9. Are Tanya's cloying penchants for therapy-speak, rainbow flags, and "tofurkey" enough to justify the hostile attitude and relentlessly barbed humor Cannie directs toward her? Why or why not? In what way might the absence of Cannie's father be contributing to her animosity? What else?
Yes, Cannie had every right to deal with Tanya the way she did. Of course we are not to judge others...that's God's place. However, Cannie dealt with hardships by using humor. I found it hillarious and not at all offensive. Cannie is obviously still upset about her father's absense in her and her siblings' lives. She blames Tanya for this because it is the easiest way to deal with the circumstances. 10. Recalling a lecture from Psych 101 on the behavioral effects of random reinforcement, Cannie realizes that she's "become [her] father's rat." What is going on here? Unpack the meanings of Cannie's metaphor, and discuss how it relates to her subsequent relationships with men.
Her father always told her she was a second-class citizen because she was fat. It got to the point where her father actually left her and her family to pursue another family in hopes that he could just "quit" the old one. Cannie's metaphor means that she was the experiment for her father. He tried with her and succeeded with his new family. She was the trial run. Because she had such a difficult time with her father, she shut out men before they could leave her. That's what happened with Bruce.11. Rate this book on a scale of 1-5. Write any comments below.
I would rate this book a 3. It touched me as I deal with some of the above-mentioned issues that Cannie dealt with. I laughed with her, got depressed when she did, and totally understood her every move. I really related well with her. I am not much of a chic-lit type of girl. That is why only a 3. However, this book is probably one of my fave chic-lit books I have read. Hope you enjoyed!!
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
