Certain Authors

Jennifer Weiner (Certain Girls, In Her Shoes) talks to the magazine attached to JDate, the Jewish Singles network. Weiner talks about “her alter ego Cannie, the ‘un-chosen chosen people’ and why she’s more Jewish than she thought she’d be.”

I grew up in a town in Connecticut where there were not a lot of Jewish people. I think that gave me a stronger Jewish identity because it did set me apart, and I think that for me and for my siblings, it made us think hard about who we were and what kind of choices we were going to make.

And, recently, in NPR’s “Books We Like,” Lizzie Skurnick gives a thoughtful -- and fairly enthusiastic -- review of Certain Girls:

Weiner, whose other forays include the critically underrated (on both page and screen) In Her Shoes, has spoken often about the trials of the chick-lit ghetto. Chief among them must be that a character as complex as Cannie disappears behind a hail of marketer-friendly blurbs like “wickedly funny” and “feisty,” with little acknowledgment that darker forces are at work. It’s telling that [Certain Girl’s protagonist] Cannie, the writer, hides her face from the critical public. The market is still no place for a girl who is equal parts zaftig and Zola.

Skurnick’s NPR review of Certain Girls is here. The JMag, JDate interview is here.