Fly Away Home (Jennifer Weiner)

I can't believe it has been over ten years since I first picked Jennifer Weiner's first novel, Good in Bed. The first time I saw the title I thought it would be smutty. Pleasantly, it wasn't. This didn't stop the security person at the airport to make a comment about how much she loved erotic novels while she was going through my very carefully packed bag.

Regardless, I have read almost all of Weiner's books since. I've loved everyone of them (although Certain Girls didn't really do it for me as much as the others). Fly Away Home totally lived up to my expectations.

Weiner has three narrators to tell the story. Sylvie, the mother, is married to Richard Woodruff, a US senator. Diane and Lizzie are her daughters and they both have their issues. And no, they aren't minor, quirky issues. These are big problems. The book starts with the incident that serves as a catalyst for Sylvie reexamining her life and her relationship with her daughters. Richards is discovered to have had an affair with an aide, who he helped land a job at a DC law firm.

Old story, right? Practically a cliche, you say? Well, in Weiner's hands the reader gets to see the fall out from the family's perspective. She does still cover themes that are staples for her, such as body image and the relationship between sisters. It also doesn't paint any of these women's choices with a black and white pallet. They may not always be sympathetic. Still, people aren't perfect and making bad choices doesn't necessarily make you a bad person.

This book has been labeled as "chick lit". Like Wiener, I do find it a little offensive that so much of women's fiction is pigeon-holed into this label. Lets face it, it kind of belittles them. We don't have a genre of "dude lit" even though it should totally exists. Anyway, Weiner is a fantastic writer and she totally deserves more respect.

So that's my love letter to Jennifer Weiner. I will most certainly read anything else she puts out for years to come.

Next up: I think this is the first nonfiction book I review here. The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped.