60 Time October 3, 201611 Questions
“Stephen King and Lee Child can enjoy
their money and their success and also
be reviewed on the front page of the
New YorkTimesBook Review.” Their
stories matter in a way that “commer-
cial women’s fiction” doesn’t.Recently you commented on Face-
book about an Oprah’s Book Club pick
and then retracted it. Why?It is hard
to be a woman writer in the world,
and if I can’t say anything nice about
someone else’s work, I’d rather not
say anything at all.How does your weight-loss
surgery jibe with your cham-
pioning of women loving who
they are?It was a very, very hard
decision, and I was aware of the
contradiction. I was so uncomfort-
able being that heavy, I wanted tobe the size that I’d been most of my
adult life before I went through post-
partum depression and was basically
eating everything that wasn’t nailed
down. If I’d been stronger, in a better
place in my marriage, I could have said,
“I’m going to weigh 300 lb. for the rest
of my life and learn to be O.K. with it.”
But I wasn’t.You advise women to give each other
compliments. How do you do that
without commenting on appearance?
My go-to compliment is “You look so
happy today.” Works for everyone.As an expert onThe Bachelor, do
you have any advice for contestants?
I do. When they ask you, “What are you
afraid of ?” don’t say heights, don’t say
the dark. Because then the producers
will say, “We’re rappelling up a building
to eat dinner!” Say you’re afraid of long
naps, chocolate croissants and mas-
sages, O.K.? —Belinda luscomBeWhy did you call your memoirHun-
gry Heart?It was calledThe F Wordfor
a while, forfat orfeminism orf-ck. It was
calledNever Breast-Feed in a Sweater-
dress and Other Lessons I Learned the
Hard Way. ButHungry Heart is perfect
because these are stories about yearning
and appetite and love and family. And
because being hungry means you don’t
always get your appetite satisfied quite
the way you’d hoped.
Bruce Springsteen doesn’t have the
copyright on that? Well, hilariously,
he has his own memoir out, but he went
withBorn to Run. And I did not.
Do you think you got picked on a
lot at school more because of your
body, your brains or your brass?
Or my boobs! I’d say it was my brain.
I just didn’t know how to talk to other
people my age, and it took me a while to
learn that. It basically took me ’til adult-
hood, when everybody else caught up.
Your father left the family in your
last year of high school. How did that
affect you?It made me a writer. When
something like that happens, or at least
when it happened to me, I wanted to
be the one who was telling the story in-
stead of the one it was happening to.
Did you ever reconcile with him?
No. My dad died in 2008. And I didn’t
know it, but he’d been addicted to her-
oin and crack. The last time I interacted
with him, he was very hostile and scary
and not the father I remembered at all.
Your mother doesn’t mind that you
make fun of her coming out as gay?
My mom is an incredibly good sport. She
recognized she was going to be material.
You’re a wildly successful novelist—
we’re on the 50th-plus printing of
Good in Bed, for example. And yet
one of your constant refrains is that
books like yours don’t get any re-
spect. Why does it matter to you?
Because I want fairness. I always say,
Jennifer Weiner The best-selling novelist talks
about her family, her difficult childhood and her
recent Oprah’s Book Club controversy
‘My go-to compliment is
“You look so happy today.”
Works for everyone.’JAVIER SIRVENT FOR TIME