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NPR's Book of the Day

In 'The Breakaway,' Jennifer Weiner touches on love, mothers and body-shaming

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Books, Arts

4.2 β€’ 672 Ratings

πŸ—“οΈ 6 September 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Abby Stern is very much looking forward to leading a biking trip from NYC to Niagara Falls – until her mom, an old one-night-stand, and some uneasy memories are added to the mix. In Jennifer Weiner's new novel, The Breakaway, that two-week trip becomes filled with tension: sexual, political, and familial. Weiner tells NPR's Juana Summers how different women manage their mothers' expectations, and how she learned to see "almond moms" quite differently while writing this novel.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's kind of funny how fiction is this

0:07.0

vast expanse of imagination. You literally can make anything you want happen on the page. And yet,

0:13.8

it is oftentimes very narrow and limiting. Take, for example, the question of who gets to have sex,

0:20.2

who gets to be desired and fallen in love and all of those things. This is for example, the question of who gets to have sex, who gets to be desired and

0:22.1

fallen in love and all of those things. This is just one of the questions the popular author

0:26.3

Jennifer Weiner is interrogating in her new book The Breakaway. It's about, well, a lot of things,

0:32.0

as you'll hear, mom-daughter relationships, abortion politics, biking. But she tells M.J.R.'s

0:37.4

Juana Summers that she was

0:38.7

writing about fatness and romance in a way that she wasn't seeing anyone else do on the bookshelves.

0:45.3

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0:50.9

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0:55.1

hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and C's apply.

1:01.2

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky

1:07.4

conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.

1:12.6

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

1:16.3

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

1:20.1

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:25.5

Jennifer Winer's books have become synonymous with sand in your toes, a beach breeze,

1:30.9

and a bright blue ocean, both in the content and the experience of reading them.

1:36.4

Her newest novel, The Breakaway, trades the beach for New York's Empire Trail, and the

1:41.6

heroine is spending her days on a bike.

1:45.9

But the themes Winer has committed to throughout all her novels are still very much there. The breakaway, like Winer's books

...

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