The term “chick-lit” has such a negative connotation. One immediately imagines a lonely spinster reading it, living vicariously through the book’s characters while eating a box of chocolates purchased in conjunction with cat food and a collector’s edition magazine celebrating the royal wedding.
Jennifer Weiner, though, has been writing chick-lit since before it was a “thing,” and her most recent book, “Then Came You,” proves that while she may fall into the ranks of the terminally idealistic, her prose carries her a head above the rest.
The novel tells the story of four women living in different worlds, Jules Strauss, Annie Barrow, India Bishop and Bettina Croft, whose paths cross thanks to egg donations, surrogacy and failed pregnancies.
Jules unwittingly donates her egg to India, who has married a wealthy older man and finds she cannot get pregnant. Annie becomes India’s surrogate, carrying the baby to term even though she has two children and a husband of her own to handle, and Bettina is India’s new step-daughter, determined to find out if the new wife is the gold-digger she suspects her to be.
Eventually, the women come to know one another and find that the child they all had a hand in creating, Rory, has brought them together.
Though the plot is tragically sentimental at times, Weiner’s sophisticated and introspective writing takes it to another level. The chapters are alternately told through first-person narratives of each of the characters, but the reader is still often left to ponder over their motives, especially in India’s case. The women are across the board when it comes to social class, financial status and marital bliss, but the author effortlessly changes voices, imperceptibly using tone and language to differentiate between them.
India’s story is the most in-depth and the most disheartening. At first, she comes off as a cold and calculating user, but as the reader gets to know more about her life and her feelings, she becomes more recognizable, more appealing and more likable. All four characters’ lives get messy, but she deals with it in the most realistic and unpleasant way.
“Then Came You” examines the challenges associated with balancing what your life really is with how others perceive it. Identity is everything to Jules, Annie, India and Bettina, and the reader gets to see each of them struggle with their feelings, dreams and fears and come to terms with the unsettling changes they undergo.
It’s true that the end result is a happy little package all tied up in a bow, with a fairy tale ending in some ways, but that’s what we come to Weiner for in the first place: Real women with real problems, plots that induce record levels of tears and unrealistically happy endings.
Rating: W W W W
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