The Nature of Things

Who knew that "influencer culture" was a thing? Who even knew there were such people as "influencers," people whose entire existence seems to be built around their ability to get you to buy stuff? Well, you knew, of course, because you are "hip" and "with it" and totally clued in to life on the internet. But me? I only live on the outer fringes of that circle and I admit to being pretty clueless about a lot of things. I only became aware of influencer culture when I picked up Jennifer Weiner's latest book. Weiner guides us on a heady romp through that culture as we follow her character, Daphne Berg. Daphne, you see, is one of those influencers. A not very influential influencer on the great scale of things but she has her followers and fans. She is a plus-size woman who was previously a plus-size teen and a plus-size child. Daphne is fat, and she has accepted that fact and she now expounds the philosophy of body-acceptance through her various...

I read this novel just after reading Elin Hilderbrand's Summer of '69 and found myself occasionally mixing the two up, ascribing one of Hilderbrand's characters to Weiner. No doubt both authors would have been appalled, but there are actually some common themes. Both books could be said to be "women's stories"; the main characters are all female and the essential thrust of the stories is about young women coming of age, about coming to accept oneself, and about women's empowerment. And both books were very, very good. Mrs. Everything tells the story of two sisters, Josette (Jo) and Elisabeth (Bethie) Kaufman. We first meet them as they are children growing up in the 1950s in Detroit and we follow them as they end up at university in Ann Arbor during its hippie period. From there Jo moves on to the oppressive atmosphere of suburban Connecticut and Bethie makes her way to a feminist collective in Atlanta, but it is what happens to these young women to impe...