{"id":17458,"date":"2014-06-29T11:17:47","date_gmt":"2014-06-29T03:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=17458"},"modified":"2014-06-29T11:17:47","modified_gmt":"2014-06-29T03:17:47","slug":"bestselling-author-weiner-draws-on-personal-experience-for-all-fall-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/06\/29\/bestselling-author-weiner-draws-on-personal-experience-for-all-fall-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Bestselling author Weiner draws on personal experience for \u2018All Fall Down\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo from goodreads.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO\u2014Jennifer Weiner delves into the dark topic of addiction in her new novel \u201cAll Fall Down,\u201d a story born of painful firsthand experience.<\/p>\n

Seven years ago, police called the bestselling author to report that her estranged father had been found dead. The cause, was a drug overdose.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d been out of my life for a really long time,\u201d Weiner recalled in a recent interview. \u201cWhen he divorced my mom (he) sort of decided he didn\u2019t want to be a father anymore … (I) hadn\u2019t seen him for seven or eight years when he died. I had no idea. Like a lot of people, I had a preconception of what addicts looked like and they did not look like my father, who was a psychiatrist who had lived in a really nice suburb, had a house with a pool. I just never in a million years (thought he was an addict) … and it was shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author drew on the harrowing ordeal for \u201cAll Fall Down,\u201d which tells the story of successful mommy blogger Allison Weiss, whose seemingly perfect life (big house, precocious child, handsome husband) begins to spiral out of control as she becomes increasingly reliant on prescription pills.<\/p>\n

As usual, Weiner\u2014a former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer\u2014used her journalistic background to research the tale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked to lots of people. I went to meetings. I talked to addiction counsellors and I sort of learned (that) this is the geography of the story. There are people who can take pain medication and it\u2019s like you take it when you need it and when you don\u2019t, you\u2019re done … and then there are people (who) take their first Vicodin or their first Percocet and they say that they felt the way they were \u2018supposed\u2019 to feel, they finally felt normal. So certain people are just wired to react differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weiner has developed a rabid fan following since publishing her first novel \u201cGood in Bed\u201d in 2001. Other titles include \u201cIn Her Shoes\u201d (which was made into a 2005 movie starring Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette) and 2010\u2019s \u201cFly Away Home.\u201d \u201cAll Fall Down\u201d is darker than her earlier outings and is being touted by some critics as Weiner\u2019s best yet.<\/p>\n

Allison\u2019s struggle evolves gradually as she increases her pill intake while dealing with the stress of a failing marriage and her father\u2019s descent into Alzheimer\u2019s. When her daughter is put at risk, she reluctantly agrees to rehab. On her current book tour, Weiner has had positive reaction from readers with similar experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great on the one hand because people say: \u2018You really nailed it.\u2019 Of course on the other hand you don\u2019t ever want to hear about people having an experience like Allison\u2019s, especially with mothers putting kids at risk when they were in active addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the author says she relishes the chance to engage with her devoted followers, she jokes that their voracious appetite for her work also has a downside: \u201cIt\u2019s always weird when you spend two years writing something and editing it and rewriting it and editing it some more and then it gets published on a Tuesday and that night, someone\u2019s like \u2018I FINISHED!\u2019 and you\u2019re like, \u2018Argh!\u2019 It\u2019s like when you make the Thanksgiving dinner and slave over the stove and then it\u2019s gone in 10 minutes!\u201d<\/p>\n

No doubt part of why readers feel such a kinship with Weiner is her avid use of social media. She live tweets \u201cThe Bachelor\u201d and has become somewhat of a lightning rod for controversy with her outspoken campaign to legitimize \u201ccommercial fiction,\u201d and her push to have publications review more books by women.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll Fall Down\u201d explores the dark side of the web, when Allison is mocked after a negative media profile. Weiner, too, is keenly aware of her detractors.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Allison says in the book, like they don\u2019t really think I\u2019m a person, I\u2019m their idea of feminism or women today …. you\u2019re a symbol and people feel like they can say whatever they want,\u201d\u2018 she said of social media. \u201cPeople say horrible, horrible things. However I think that I\u2019m pointing to real quantifiable problems and when I say women aren\u2019t getting the attention that men get and here are a boatload of statistics to prove it, I think that\u2019s kind of undeniable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll Fall Down\u201d marks a milestone in Weiner\u2019s campaign to have more female authors reviewed in the New York Times Review of Books. The mother of two recently got her first notice there, and it was glowing.<\/p>\n

Said the author: \u201cI got a heads up a week ago where, I was in a hotel room and my editor emailed me and she was just like: \u2018It\u2019s going to be in this Sunday\u2019s Times and it\u2019s a really great review.\u2019 And was like: \u2018Are you kidding me?\u2019 I couldn\u2019t believe it. I was really, really just so happy, like pinch me. I never, ever thought I\u2019d see the day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO\u2014Jennifer Weiner delves into the dark topic of addiction in her new novel \u201cAll Fall Down,\u201d a story born of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":17459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-andrea-baillie","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}