In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner

In Her Shoes chronicles the experiences of two sisters, Maggie and Rose, who were brought closer together by the death of their manic-depressive mother when they were young. Their closeness doesn't stop them from being in almost constant conflict, though -- they are sisters, after all. Rose is the smart and successful sister, the one who went to Princeton and is now a lawyer. Maggie tries to fight her feeling of inferiority by being as pretty and sexy as possible, but even she can't escape the fact that her life is a mess, a series of failed relationships and boring retail jobs that she quit after just a few days. Rose resents the way she always has to bail Maggie out of one mess or another, the way Maggie takes whatever she wants from everyone and never seems to understand the need to make a decent living and pay her own way. Maggie, on the other hand, wishes that Rose would just get off her case and try to understand how her lifelong struggle with dyslexia has made everything she tries to do so much more difficult.

Meanwhile, their maternal grandmother, Ella, is still wounded from the way her son-in-law angrily cut her out of Maggie and Rose's lives after her daughter's death. She lives alone in a Florida retirement community, filling her days with volunteer work and avoiding close friendships so she'll never have to revisit the painful memories of her lost family.

I know these women sound like a pretty hopeless trio, but they are all likeable characters who have some personal growth to go through and closer bonds to forge with one another. As the title suggests, each of them needs to spend some time trying to look at life from the other's point of view; as an added chicklit bonus, they all wear the same size shoe so lots of shoe-borrowing symbolism comes into play during the course of the novel.

And so as I complete my blitz through Jennifer Weiner's back catalogue, the question that haunts me is - what the HECK happened with Goodnight Nobody? My conclusion: Weiner should stick to chicklit and stay away from further cross-genre experiments.

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

Remember those "alphabet mysteries" I've been raving about on this blog - starring sassy PI Kinsey Millhone?

Well, in this book I have discovered the anti-Kinsey.

Meet Stephanie Plum. She's down on her luck, in a big way. No job, no skills, no car, no money, and soon no furniture (because it's all in the pawn shop). Where Kinsey Millhone is street-smart, Stephanie is a smartass. Where Kinsey is a tough loner, Stephanie is saddled with an overbearing New Jersey family (including a crazy grandma who wears spandex biking shorts and shoots roast chickens). Kinsey set up her own PI company after learning everything she needed to know from an old pro; Stephanie takes a job as a bounty hunter for her cousin Vinnie's bail bonding company, and is so clueless that she can find her man four or five times and never bring him in.

This is a terrific book, with a voice so strong it almost reaches out and smacks you (if you haven't already fallen over from laughing). I love the way Evanovich has turned the female detective genre upside down; Stephanie Plum is absolutely hopeless in every way, and yet somehow she manages to get the job done in her own unique and appealing way. I can't wait to read the sequel.

Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner

Aha... now here is the answer to why Jennifer Weiner ever got published. This is her first novel, and it's quite engrossing. It's the story of Cannie, a young reporter with a terrible self-image who hasn't quite recovered from the end of her last long-term relationship. During the course of this novel, she goes through stages of healing and personal growth while various good and bad things (I won't say what) happen to her. I found the writing far better than previous Weiner novels, and Cannie was a realistic and likeable character.

I'm glad to finally have enjoyed a Jennifer Weiner book, after one dud and one "good but not great" novel by an author who has been so enthusiastically recommended to me. If you think you might like to give Jennifer Weiner a try, this is the one to start with. (Well, I say that now but I'll be reading "In Her Shoes" next, so watch this space for details...)

Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner

Here I got a better answer to the question of "Why Jennifer Weiner's books are so darn popular." This novel was far more engaging than Goodnight Nobody, with more in-depth characterization and an interesting mix of four women's stories of first-time motherhood, each woven together as they become friends and share experiences. The writing was good enough and the story compelling enough that I was able to overlook the occasional annoying foray into clothing descriptions.

In brief, this novel is about the pregnancies and first months of motherhood of four people: Becky (the fat one), Lia (the sad one), Ayinde (the exotic, rich one) and Kelly (the control freak). Yes, I'm being tongue-in-cheek - there's more to these characters than a simple label, and over the course of the novel they have a range of experiences that help to make them more and more "real". Each woman struggles with some aspect of becoming a mother for the first time, and they deal with their life tragedies and challenges by drawing on each other's friendship. There's nothing deep and Naomi-Wolf-ish here, just a simple, charming tale of joy, sadness and friendship. If you're thinking you might like to try this writer and are not averse to "mommy lit", Little Earthquakes wouldn't be the worst place to start.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Nadezhda has a problem. Well, a few problems. She's still recovering from her mother's death two years ago, she is barely speaking to her older sister Vera, and now her 84-year-old father has dropped a bombshell; he is importing a young, buxom new bride from the Ukraine, his motherland. Her name is Valentina, and according to Pappa, she is an angel. All Nadezhda can see, though, are her father's home, pension, and minimal savings being sucked away by the opportunistic, big-breasted Valentina.

Nadezhda's efforts to get Valentina out of her father's life have some unexpected consequences. She's never seen eye to eye with her sister, but now they have something in common. Pooling their strengths and resources to evict the enemy from their mother's home, the sisters discover a way to see past their differences, and Nadezhda begins to piece together the story of her family's past. Slowly, she begins to understand some of the dynamics in her family as she learns about their wartime life in the Ukraine and the hardships involved in their trek to England.

At first I had mixed feelings about this novel; while it was charming, the characters weren't people I could really connect to or empathize with. Once I got into the book, though, I became intrigued by the situation that this family was in. I wanted to know what would happen. Would Valentina settle down and become a caring wife to her elderly husband during his final years? Would Nadezhda and Vera succeed in bringing about a divorce and having Valentina expelled from Britain by the immigration authorities? And what were the awful secrets buried in this family's past? Most importantly, would the slightly loopy Pappa ever complete his book, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian?

Finding out the answers to these questions made this book a satisfying read. If you're in the mood for a touching, occasionaly hilarious immigrant family drama, you might want to check this out.