“She’s super smart, but her books are perceived as fluffy,” says Lizzie Skurnick, a critic with a long history of looking at Chick Lit. “Women are far and away the bigger consumers of fiction than men, but men are still far and away the more reviewed, the more critically esteemed, the more respected,” she points out. Although Weiner is happy that her books are popular, it doesn’t make the lack of attention from the critical establishment any less of, as she would say, an “ish.” Like other creative industries - music, movies - publishing’s bottom line is elevated by its big hits. “My book sales make ‘real writers’ possible.” “The idea that somehow the success of that genre meant less shelf space for quote-unquote worthwhile writing by women, I’m sorry, but no, that’s not the way it works in the economy,” Weiner says. Weiner was a target in the anthology “This Is Not Chick Lit,” which sought to reestablish a literary beachhead for female writers. These books are important because they “give voice” to a new generation of women “as they try to navigate financial issues, career issues and family issues.”

Mallory Young, a professor of English at Tarleton State University in Texas, co-edited “Chick Lit: The New Women’s Fiction,” one of the few academic works about the genre. Weiner swiftly established herself as one of the best in the chick lit class.įor a time, bookstores were awash in these pink-jacketed novels - some pale shadows of Weiner’s, all similarly adorned with pictures of shoes and purses and kicky girlish silhouettes. She followed it up with “In Her Shoes,” a tale of two sisters that was made into a 2005 film starring Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette. That book, about a zaftig woman trying to find success, sparkled with Weiner’s funny, strong voice. When her first novel, “Good in Bed,” came out in 2001, she was swept up in the chick lit tide.

Weiner has an easy grip on the sassy side of the zeitgeist. At every stop on her book tour, she serves cupcakes she’ll be at Vroman’s in Pasadena on Monday. Weiner’s new novel, “Fly Away Home,” the story of a betrayed political wife and her two adult daughters, is prominently displayed at Target and in the top 10 lists on. And she’s one of the few authors a publisher will book into a hotel in Beverly Hills.īecause, as she explains simply, her books sell. The unpretentious 40-year-old is different from many other novelists: She’s online, engaged and quick to speak up for women’s fiction. With her kids ensconced in an upstairs room, she collapses into a perfect leather chair and sweetly, if sweatily, orders off the bar menu. Jennifer Weiner, the bestselling author of eight books, had been battling traffic for close to an hour before landing at the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

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