Certain Girls

After Cannie Shapiro's father left her life, her mother came out of the closet, and her ex-boyfriend began publishing details of their past relationships in a national magazine, readers fell in love with the intelligent, witty, and tender heroine of Good in Bed.

Cannie is back now. She left the public glare and started writing science fiction under a pen name when her first book, a highly sexualized and dramatized account of her life, became an instant hit. She has happily settled into a life she finds wonderfully predictable, knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy's drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and doing over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha. She is married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky.

Everything appears perfect in Cannie's life as she gets ready for Joy's bat mitzvah. Joy is confronted with what she believes to be the truth about her own conception—a secret her mother has kept from her her whole life—when she comes across the book Cannie penned years before. Peter shocks his wife by announcing that he wants a child, and this forces the family to reevaluate their past, present, and definition of true happiness.

With Weiner's razor-sharp writing and incisive observations of contemporary life, Certain Girls is a brilliantly amusing and unexpectedly poignant tale of love, sorrow, and the eternal ties of family.