Book reviews: mainstream, straight up

The Preservationist – David Maine

Very interesting little book. It’s the story of the Flood, partially from Noah’s point of view but mostly from his family’s. His wife and three daughters-in-law are by far the most entertaining, especially when he sends the girls out to collect the animals while he and his sons work on the ark. The first half is full of laughs; the second half, while the increasingly fractious family is stuck on the ark with a bunch of animals whose stalls need to be mucked out all the time, is less so. The ending is strangely not what I had in mind, but it fits.

Good in Bed – Jennifer Weiner

I adore this book. I’d listened to Weiner’s In Her Shoes on audio and didn’t really care for it, but now I’m wondering if it was abridged, because her voice is so precariously funny—and by that I mean teetering on the edge of despair—that a ham-handed edit could easily gut the book. Anyway, Good in Bed is the story of Cannie, a plus-sized woman who discovers, on the first page, that her ex-boyfriend has written a column about their relationship in excruciating, embarrassing, explicit detail. Each installment brings her a fresh round of self-doubt, not to mention humiliation. Meanwhile she’s trying to keep things going as an entertainment reporter for a Philadelphia newspaper, only the stars’ publicists aren’t cooperating. There’s a hilarious outing on a California beach with her favorite movie star. Oh, and then there’s her mother, the lesbian. I don’t want to give away too much; just read it.