Jennifer Weiner, bestselling author of GOOD IN BED and IN HER
SHOES, handpicks some of her short stories --- some old, some new
--- in this collection of short fiction. Usual themes of dissected
families, marriage and children are all here, and it soon becomes
apparent the reason for Weiner's incredible popularity --- her
likeable voice. She's your best friend, sister, college roommate
and co-worker, with real issues of insecurity and self-doubt. And
as evidenced in these stories, she has always possessed this
talent. These 11 pieces, written at different points in her career,
all enjoy something relatable, which will delight fans of her
earlier books and certainly garner new ones.

The first three stories ("Just Desserts," "Travels with Nicki" and
"The Wedding Bed") all feature the lead character, Josie, and her
eccentric family --- a family in transition. "Just Desserts"
explores the fallout after their distant father leaves the family
after months of simmering tension. Their mother retreats to their
outdoor swimming pool, swimming endless laps to escape the sadness:
"I had heard them fighting at night, his hissing whispers and her
tears, and I knew that for the last month he'd come home late, and
for the last week, not at all, but I'd been telling myself I was
worrying about nothing, that they were just going through a rough
patch, that things were going to be fine." It culminates with the
remaining family sculpting replicas of themselves out of ice cream
and our narrator vociferously choking down every last morsel.
Sometimes you have to first tear down in order to rebuild.

In "Travels with Nicki," our heroine Josie accompanies her sister
to Florida to join the rest of their family at their grandmother's
condo. Nicki spends most of the time bemoaning an imagined kidney
infection when she's not working on her tan or contemplating
dropping out of college. In "The Wedding Bed" Josie is preparing
for her wedding when she gets some unexpected interlopers into her
bridal suite on the eve of her wedding. What should have been a
night of solitary reflection turns into a teenage sleepover with
her raucous sister and brother. Although it's not what Josie had in
mind, she wouldn't have it any other way.

"Swim" is the heart-wrenching story of a young woman, disfigured by
a brutal accident in childhood that claimed the lives of her
parents, who has retreated into a life of solitary routine. She
used to be a writer on a top TV show, but when she gets jilted by
her writing partner, she recoils from life, content to spend most
nights swimming laps in her health club pool. (Swimming as means of
a safe haven is a big theme for Weiner.) When she begins to help a
handsome stranger rewrite his personal ad, we see glimmers of what
used to be. Will she be able to recapture her long-since shuttered
love of life?

The title story, which was originally published in Glamour
magazine in 2005, is a new twist on the
"you-don't-know-what-you've-got-till-it's-gone" theme. New wife and
mother Marlie Davidow is trying to reconcile her single self with
her many new responsibilities. When she comes across her old
slacker boyfriend's wedding registry, as a lark, she replaces the
bride's name with her own. When she wakes up, she discovers that
her whole life (or what she knew as her life) has changed. She's
engaged to her old boyfriend and doesn't have a child (or stretch
marks, for that matter). She's living a new life --- what her life
could have been had she stayed with her old boyfriend. But Marlie
soon discovers that the proverbial grass is always greener. Despite
the sleep deprivation, her workaholic and sometimes forgetful
husband, and even those stretch marks, her old life was worth
it.

These 11 stories aptly demonstrate how deftly Weiner can transcend
the normally limiting moniker of "chick-lit." Her characters are
flesh-and-blood people, with flesh-and-blood problems. They
navigate the everyday terrain that we all traverse and usually do
so with self-deprecating humor. And to further the point of the
author's likeability, she even includes her own notes on the
stories --- explaining how and when she wrote each --- to
wonderfully round out each narrative. If only every writer would do
that.