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Jennifer Weiner, Novelist
Jennifer Weiner has helped to popularize “chick
lit,” a genre of books featuring young, female protagonists
struggling to manage their careers, find true love, and reform their
eating and spending habits. Weiner has been vocal in defending her
work and that of her fellow chick-lit writers against those who use
the term disparagingly. She told Ron Hogan for the literary blog
Beatrice.com (March 9, 2005), “Writing funny, fast-moving fiction
about young women finding their place in the world means your
invitation to join the Beautiful Sentence Society will be
permanently lost in the mail. The New York Times won't review
you; the newsweeklies won't write profiles, and don't even get me
started on what will happen when you query the New Yorker.”
She elaborated on the theme in a post on her own blog: “The more I
think about the increasingly angry divide between ladies who write
literature and chicks who write chick lit, the more it seems like a
grown-up version of the smart versus pretty games of years ago; like
so much jockeying for position in the cafeteria and mocking the
girls who are nerdier/sluttier/stupider than you to make yourself
feel more secure about your own place in the pecking order.” There
seems to be little doubt in the minds of Weiner's fans as to her
place in the pecking order: some 10 million copies of her books
exist in print; each of her titles has landed on the New York
Times best-seller list; and they have been published in more
than 30 countries, including China and Bulgaria.
Jennifer Weiner was born on March 28, 1970 in
DeRidder, Louisiana. Two years later she moved to the affluent
suburb of Simsbury, Connecticut, with her parents, Lawrence and
Fran, and her sister, Molly. The couple later had two more children,
Jake and Joe. When Weiner was 16 years old, Lawrence, a
psychiatrist, abandoned the family. (Fran, a teacher, later began
dating women.) Weiner remembers being unpopular in high school.
“It's very funny, there's a bit of revisionist history going on in
my home town now,” she told Tracy Cochran for Publishers Weekly
(September 13, 2004). “I spoke at an event there about a year and a
half ago and the mother of this boy who had just tormented me and
hated me in high school introduced me. He was one of the really
popular and good-looking boys. I don't even think I was allowed to
make direct eye contact with him. Yet his mother went on and on
about what close friends he and I were. . . . The truth was that he
would have rather died than speak to me then.”
While struggling socially, Weiner was a stellar
student, and in 1987 she enrolled at Princeton University, in New
Jersey, where she studied writing with such luminaries as Toni
Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and John McPhee. In 1990 Weiner won
Princeton's Academy of American Poets Prize, and the following year
she graduated, summa cum laude. Despite her academic and literary
achievements, her college years were not completely happy. “I
remember every semester in college you go to register for classes
and you would get pulled out of line if your parents hadn't paid,”
she recalled to Cochran. “I remember every goddamned semester I had
to go to the financial aid office and say, ‘I don't know where [my
father] is and he owes my mom alimony and I don't know what's going
on but somebody is going to pay for this.' That somebody wound up
being my mother and me. I remember thinking I don't want my life to
be like this. I don't want to have to depend on anybody else for my
security, financial or otherwise.”
After graduating from Princeton, Weiner took a
six-week journalism class at the Poynter Institute for Media
Studies, in Florida, and accepted a job in central Pennsylvania as
an education reporter for the Centre Daily Times. She
explained on her Web site: “When I was finishing up with college, lo
these many years ago, I had an English degree, which meant that I
was qualified to do precisely nothing, except compose lovely
paragraphs, and speak knowledgeably about French feminist literary
theory. . . . I was lucky enough to have John McPhee as a professor,
and he was generous enough to give me the best piece of advice
ever—go into journalism. ‘You'll see a different part of the world.
You'll meet all kinds of people. You'll be writing every day, on
deadline'—which, of course, turned out to be invaluable when it came
time to write fiction.”
In addition to her reporting, in 1992 Weiner was
assigned by her editors to write a youth-oriented column for the
Centre Daily Times. The Knight-Ridder news wire began
distributing the columns—which covered such topics as safe sex and
the challenges facing political candidates seeking the youth vote—to
papers all over the country. Meanwhile, Weiner continued writing
fiction and was occasionally able to sell short stories to such
magazines as Redbook and Seventeen.
In 1994 Weiner moved to Lexington, Kentucky, to
write features for the Lexington Herald Leader. In 1995 she
moved back to the East Coast to become a general-assignment writer
for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a major paper that had
previously published her columns. Her new editors insisted that she
stop writing opinion pieces, and, as she joked on her Web site's
timeline, “Realizing that [I'd] pretty much ridden the Gen-X trend
into the ground, and after editors and peers gently point out that
[I] will not be twentysomething forever, [I] agree.” While at the
Philadelphia Inquirer, Weiner profiled such celebrities as the
comedian and actor Adam Sandler and the Mafia wife Victoria Gotti
and wrote articles on such diverse topics as the Miss America
Pageant, gefilte fish, and drug abuse. Concurrently, in 1998 she
became a contributing editor at Mademoiselle and made regular
appearances as a cultural commentator on a local television show,
Philly After Midnight.
Weiner was inspired to write her first novel,
Good in Bed (2001), by events in her own life. “I got dumped,”
she explained to Bryant Gumbel for CBS News (May 29, 2001). “And my
heart was broken. And people with broken hearts are really boring. I
mean, you . . . go around sounding like really bad Britney Spears,
you know, my heart will never smile again. And there's a gray cloud
in my soul. And my friends were getting really sick of listening to
me. . . . I was getting really sick of sounding that way, to tell
you the truth. And so I said, ‘I'm going to write a book about
somebody with a broken heart like this and I'm going to make it
funny.'” Good in Bed tells the story of Cannie Shapiro, a
witty young Jewish woman who is humiliated when her ex-boyfriend
writes an article for a national magazine about “loving a larger
woman” in a weight-obsessed society. Cannie overcomes the
embarrassment and ultimately finds romance without compromising
herself or losing weight.
Weiner, who has fought her own weight battles for
years, submitted sample chapters of Good in Bed to more than
20 agents. Most of them immediately refused to represent the young
writer; one agreed to try to sell the book only if Weiner rewrote it
to make Cannie thinner. Referring to the heroine of a popular 1996
chick-lit book, Weiner told Sara Vilkomerson for the New York
Observer (July 11, 2005), “I remember thinking, ‘Cannie's weight
is the plight of the whole book, and if I take it out she's just
Bridget Jones at a bat mitzvah.'” Eventually, as Weiner wrote on her
Web site, “[I] found what I was looking for—an agent who was in love
with what I'd written, who got it on every level, who was going to
do her damndest to find my book a happy home. And that, bless her
adorable little size-two heart, is exactly what Joanna Pulcini did.”
Pulcini sold the book in less than a week, for a reported six-figure
sum. It quickly landed on the New York Times best-seller list
and has since been published in more than 15 languages.
While Weiner has often joked that her Princeton
professors must be horrified by the popular appeal of her work, she
is unabashed by her commercial success. She told Cochran, “If I were
to do a Marxist critique, I'd say [there] is a reaction against
women gaining power and economic stature in the marketplace. Book
sales are flat, chick lit sales are up. And that's scary to a lot of
people.”
Weiner left the Philadelphia Inquirer to
promote Good in Bed and begin writing her second novel. Like
her career, her personal life was undergoing change: in October 2001
she married Adam Bonin, a lawyer, and the pair rented Philadelphia's
Mutter Museum, which houses an extensive collection of items
concerning medical oddities, for the wedding reception.
In 2002 Weiner's sophomore novel, In Her Shoes,
was published. It tells the story of two sisters: the professionally
successful but frumpy and depressed Rose and the beautiful, dyslexic
party girl Maggie. Carole Goldberg wrote for the Hartford Courant
(November 3, 2002), “This is a Cinderella fable with a wicked
stepmother, an ugly stepsister, an unlikely prince, and two heroines
who turn out to be each other's fairy godmothers. If you're shopping
for a modern fairy tale with plenty of humor and heart, and In
Her Shoes fits, then wear it.” Other reviewers were less
favorably impressed. Debra Pickett, for example, wrote for the
Chicago Sun-Times (November 17, 2002), “The ‘hook’ that helped
propel both of Weiner's books onto the best-seller lists is that her
heroines—journalist Cannie Shapiro in Good in Bed and lawyer
Rose Fuller—are plus-sized women. And the evil women who variously
try to steal their men, make them look bad at work and do all sorts
of other terrible stuff to them are all thin. The one thing you know
about every single female character in Weiner's books is what dress
size she wears. And, from that, you can determine virtually
everything else about her. Large women are smart and hardworking.
They eat right and exercise and always do the right thing. Skinny
women are lazy and troubled. . . . They mindlessly step over people,
since the world lays out a red carpet for them.” Despite the varied
critical responses, In Her Shoes enjoyed stellar sales, and
Weiner, then pregnant with her first child, Lucy Jane, was met by
large crowds of fans as she toured to promote the book. In 2005 a
big-screen adaptation of In Her Shoes was released. The film
starred Cameron Diaz as Maggie; Toni Collette (who gained 20 pounds
for the role) as Rose; and Shirley MacLaine as Ella, the girls'
feisty grandmother. Cameo roles were found for Weiner and her
sister, grandmother, and agent. Weiner wrote for the Philadelphia
Inquirer (September 11, 2005), “There's no easy way to describe
what it feels like to sit in the dark and see something you've
dreamed up in your head up there on the big screen, larger than life
and, in the case of Cameron Diaz, a hundred times better-looking.
Surreal doesn't begin to cover it.”
Weiner's next book and third New York Times
best-seller, Little Earthquakes (2004), is the story of a
group of friends living in Philadelphia and adjusting to pregnancy
and new motherhood: Becky, a warmhearted chef with a doting husband
and an overbearing mother-in-law; Ayinde, the glamorous wife of a
philandering pro basketball star; Kelly, a perky, blond party
planner; and Lia, an actress whose baby has died. “After I'd
finished Little Earthquakes, I found myself missing the
characters,” Deborah Sussman Susser wrote for the Washington Post
(September 15, 2004, on-line). “Theirs is a world where young
mothers invite strange women in distress into their homes, serve
them tea and sympathy and tell them, in essence, ‘You go,
girlfriend.' It may not be realistic as literary worlds go, but it
is reassuring in its warmth and predictability. And judging by the
success of chick lit generally and Weiner's books specifically, a
lot of us out there are willing—even eager—to suspend our disbelief
long enough to enter it.” Melinda Bargreen wrote for the Seattle
Times (September 19, 2004, on-line), “Full of snappy dialogue,
Little Earthquakes is grown-up chick lit for readers who may
be relieved to discover there is life beyond the genre's eternal
quest for suitable husbands.”
Weiner considered calling her next book—the 2005
tale of a housewife who becomes embroiled in a murder mystery—“Momicide.”
She decided instead on Goodnight Nobody, an allusion to a
line in the popular children's book Goodnight Moon by
Margaret Wise Brown. Kate Klein, the protagonist of Goodnight
Nobody, is a young mother who finds herself overwhelmed by the
demands of her three children. When she discovers one of her
neighbors stabbed to death on the floor of her otherwise immaculate
kitchen, Kate sees a chance to escape the tedium of suburbia by
solving the crime. Some critics found Weiner's venture into the
mystery genre disappointing. Missy Schwartz wrote for
Entertainment Weekly (September 16, 2005, on-line), “Jennifer
Weiner has a gift for creating funny, flawed heroines . . . but as a
suspense writer, she's still finding her footing. The Desperate
Housewives gimmick throws Goodnight Nobody off focus,
robbing us of Weiner's typically razor-sharp originality.” Other
reviews were more positive. “As with all of Weiner's novels,
Goodnight Nobody is witty and clever, and Weiner proves that her
writing prowess extends beyond chick lit and deeply into the mystery
genre,” Roberta O'Hara wrote for the Book Reporter Web site.
“Although the ending verged on over-the-top, to Weiner's credit it
was a huge surprise. The quality of this novel, however, was no
surprise. Weiner is gifted and funny, and Goodnight Nobody
equals her earlier well-received works.”
In 2006 Weiner published a short-story collection,
The Guy Not Taken. Weiner had written the pieces in the
volume over the span of several years. Two, “Just Desserts” and
“Travels with Nicki,” had been written while she was still attending
Princeton, while the title story, about a woman who becomes obsessed
by her ex-boyfriend's on-line wedding registry, had been originally
published in Glamour the year before. Many of the stories
touched on themes from Weiner's own life, among them divorce, absent
fathers, and onerous college tuitions. Carol Memmott wrote for
USA Today (September 7, 2006), “Jennifer Weiner is resigned to
the fact that in some circles she is referred to as the ‘Queen of
Chick Lit.' But I challenge anyone who says her short-story
collection, The Guy Not Taken, isn't serious women's fiction.
Not that there's anything wrong with chick lit, but the women in
these stories are a far cry from the Manolo-obsessed bubbleheads
sometimes found in chick lit novels. These women apply healthy doses
of self-doubt, loneliness, and misgivings along with their lipgloss
and mascara. . . . All the stories in Weiner's collection have that
‘Calgon, Take Me Away' quality to which smart women, whose lives are
complicated by careers, men, babies, parents, and siblings, can
relate.”
Weiner's most recent novel, Certain Girls
(2008), continues the story of Cannie Shapiro from Good in Bed.
“In her bubbly new novel, Certain Girls, Jennifer Weiner
achieves the nearly impossible: She makes being a fat, middle-aged
woman in America appear not just acceptable but positively
delightful,” Jennifer Reese wrote for Entertainment Weekly
(April 4, 2008, on-line). “Cannie was appealing as a lovelorn career
girl, but she's even more likable as a sanguine matron with a
minivan and a Crock-Pot.”
Although most critics were happy to see Cannie
return, the respected novelist Jane Smiley wrote in a review for the
Philadelphia Inquirer (April 6, 2008, on-line), “Just so you
know the target audience, Jennifer Weiner's new novel, Certain
Girls, is about the pinkest book you can imagine. The jacket is
pale pink; the endpapers are practically fuchsia. The jacket also
sports a fluffy skirt and some very high heels.” Smiley continued,
“I mention these things because Weiner does not need to be published
in pink—her publishers could target a general audience. Weiner is a
talented and accomplished novelist, with real stylistic flair,
excellent and sometimes laugh-out-loud wit, and good insight into
her characters. In her latest novel, she seems boxed in by her
chosen genre, and it's a shame, because she's got the intelligence
and the ambition to address larger questions than the psychological
ups and downs of her nice Jewish characters. For whatever reason,
though, she doesn't dare.” The review was widely quoted on the
Internet and set off renewed debate on the merits of chick lit.
Weiner responded during an interview with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
for the Wall Street Journal (April 11, 2008, on-line): “The
Inquirer has a right to hire whomever they want, and Jane
Smiley has a right to her opinions. The only part that surprised me
was her taking issue with the pink cover. That's not something I
have a lot of control over. Maybe Jane Smiley tells her publisher
what cover to give her.” Weiner continued, “When an older writer
tries to tell a younger writer through a review what kind of career
she should be pursuing, it tends to speak to the reviewer's
anxieties rather than the book itself. . . . It made me think the
book was her jumping off place. But I'll be Jane Smiley's trampoline
any day.”
While In Her Shoes is Weiner's only book
thus far to be adapted for the screen, it has been reported that HBO
is developing a series based on Good in Bed, Little Earthquakes
is in development at Universal, and DreamWorks has optioned the
rights to The Guy Not Taken. In early 2008 Weiner signed a
two-year, seven-figure deal with ABC to create and produce programs
for the company.
Weiner, who had a second daughter, Phoebe Pearl,
in 2007, lives with her family in a restored row house in
Philadelphia. She told Ellen Futterman for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch (November 29, 2006), “If you look at the books
I've written, you can sort of chart my life, from being single to
getting married to having a baby. But it's not ever all my story
because my story is not that interesting. It's more the raw
materials of my life and my friends' lives and readers' lives
whipped into a meringue of fiction.”
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