Best Friends Forever: A Novel
by Jennifer Weiner
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jennifer WeinerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-07-14
ISBN: 0743294297
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Atria Books
Book Reviews of Best Friends Forever: A Novel
Book Review: "Best Friends" not best book
Summary: 2 Stars
I LOVED "Good in Bed" by Jennifer Weiner, but unfortunately subsequent books haven't, in my opinion, been written as well, and this one, "Best Friends Forever" totally lost me. The school jock who date rapes a girl in high school getting his comeuppance at the reunion, to the unpopular, less attractive girl being eternally loyal sidekick to pretty, beautiful and popular girl are plots which have been done to death, and they certainly were here.
Weiner does go back and show the development of the friendship from the time the girls, Valerie and Addie, are nine years old, and she depicts well the family environments that shape the girls, but even then the dynamic is in place, that Val is the axis that Addie spins around. What happens after that, through high school is only briefly alluded to a couple of times, with no other depiction of Addie's and Val's high school life. It becomes clear though that Val, needing to fit in with the jocks/popular kids, betrays Addie horribly, after Addie stands up to the jock that raped Val, and does nothing to return the favor or protect her, while the other kids make Addie's life a living hell. Fast forward again, there is alot of that in this novel, to the night of the reunion, in which there had been no communication between the two in all the intervening years, and Val shows up at Addie's door, begging for her help, because "I don't do blood." Of course, Addie consents, because that is what a loyal sidekick DOES. It would have been nice if Addie had said NO to Val, if she had asserted herself, indicated that Val had hurt her enough, and end it there. It would have also been interesting to see what would have happened if it was Addie who had appeared at Val's door asking for help. Both scenarios would have made for very short books.
So now, with those tangled dynamics in place, we enter the realm of silly to absolutely ludicrous in plot. Who was Val getting "revenge" on when she took the photo of Dan, since she said, "now you will know what it feels like to be laughed at," yet the one who was laughed at and abused was Addie, with Val's participation. Why is it practically written in stone that all high school jocks/popular kids have to be soulless cretins who live to torture the defenseless? The cop going all super-detective on a bit of blood on a belt, with no victim, no complaint, no witnesses, nothing that indicated a crime in any way? Val and Addie going "Thelma and Louise,' yet illustrating with perfect clarity that it was all still all about Val, that Addie should give and give and give, and Val should take and take and take,just as it had always been?
It has been said in other reviews that Addie had gotten thin and had a happy life, but I would disagree here. Though she had lost the weight, she was desperately lonely, with no family, except for Jon who also could only take from her, and not really give to her, no friends, no lovers, and a string of blind dates with losers. Why does Weiner make Addie so pathetic? Why did she have to pay her entire life for having values and loving parents, as well as having a weight problem? Why does Weiner depict so clearly that it is not truly who you are but what you look like that matters? Val tells Addie that she had hated Addie because she had a family that cared about her, while Val did not. This is Addie's "best" friend? Mind you, Val is begging Addie to clean up Val's mess while she imparts this revelation. Weiner clearly showed that Addie's parents were people that she was supposed to be ashamed of, because they were different, yet the scenes of love and care made Addie a very lucky girl. The description of Addie and her father in the basement, she doing her homework while he worked on his puppets, listening to comedy records together, just being together, melted my heart. The love that Addie and her mother had for each other as Addie cared for her until her death. We saw the dynamic with poor Val and her lousy excuse for a mother, living a life of manipulation, theft,neglect, the crossing of all kinds of boundaries, and how hard that had to be for her. Yet Addie was the bad girl, the ugly girl, the one it was permissible to torment and demand of. Val was still the lucky girl, the beautiful girl, the successful girl, the "popular" girl. There is never any revelation from Addie that she deserved better from Val, ever, or that she deserved better from anyone. The denouement with the baby ( a tumor? Please...) and Val swearing to be there for her just falls very flat, as does the instant romance with the cop, who also was depicted without substance or character or backbone, who allowed his ex wife to torture and abuse him unmercifully, then betraying him altogether, without a whimper. He must have had a weight problem at some point. No, this one isn't worth the time.
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