Thursday, April 10, 2008

Certain Girls have arrived!

From one of my favorite authors...Just got the book yesterday so I haven't started it yet but I can't wait to read it.

Greetings from Philadelphia!

Not much to report from here. Nope. A nice, quiet, peaceful…oh, yeah! I had another baby!
I actually didn’t forget about her, but Phoebe Pearl, born November 30, 2007, is a remarkably low-key and unobtrusive baby, who is smiley and tranquil and can be amused for hours on end by her thumb (which I have to assume she gets from me…if you substitute Rock of Love for “her thumb,” we are basically the same person, only I’m much bigger, and with hair).In the year leading up to Phoebe’s birth, I was engaged in the act of prognostication, imagining what it would be like to be the mother of a thirteen-year-old daughter on the verge of her bat mitzvah. That’s the situation Cannie Shapiro of
GOOD IN BED finds herself experiencing in CERTAIN GIRLS, the sequel, which is hitting the stores today.

As a writer, the moments that interest me most are the moments of transition, the instant when a character’s life is on the verge of breaking apart, and then re-forming in a new and interesting way. I always knew I wanted to write a sequel to GOOD IN BED…and I always knew I didn’t want that sequel to pick up six weeks later and have Cannie dealing with slightly updated versions of the same woes that plagued her in the first book (another dating disaster, another diet).

I wanted to write about Cannie as a mother. I wanted to see what kind of girl Joy grew up to be; how the events of her birth and her mother’s history affected her. I wanted to write about a marriage, and have Cannie, through her husband’s prompting, have to answer the questions that you deal with not when you’re looking for Mr. Right but after you’ve found him: whose definition of happiness prevails in a partnership? At what point does comfort become stagnation? At what moment is holding still motivated less by contentment than by fear? If I had to describe CERTAIN GIRLS in a single phrase, I’d tell you that it’s a coming of age story. It’s the story of Joy preparing for her bat mitzvah and her entry into Jewish adulthood, while navigating the shoals of early adolescence; and it’s the story of Cannie, as she deals with her problematic past, her rebellious daughter, and the big question of what, exactly, her happy ending will look like.
On the lighter side, I also was lucky enough to attend a number of bar and bat mitzvahs as research, to see what the services and parties are like these days, and to meet some really delightful 13-year-olds and their families.


I enjoyed writing it. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. I hope that, if you live in New York or Philadelphia, you’ll make it to one of my readings (I’m doing a little tiny tour this time, on account of the little tiny baby), and that you’ll continue to check back on my weblog for an ongoing account of the writing life, the baby stuff.

As always, thanks for reading…and enjoy CERTAIN GIRLS.

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