In praise of chick lit (at last!)

I've mentioned before how fed up I am with all the chick lit bashing and finally I've found an article in support of chick lit. The wonderful Jennifer Weiner has written a fabulous piece about women's fiction in the American edition of this month's Elle magazine. Beginning with a discussion of how women's fiction has always been considered more trivial and less profound than men's (even though women are the primary purchasers of fiction and that women's fiction dominates the best-seller lists), she goes on to say:

'And woe to the woman who writes a breezy novel with a likable female protagonist and a happy ending. This is chick lit, of course, the ghetto within the ghetto [of women's fiction]. At best, critics call the form "entirely disposable," "merely entertaining," "entirely unchallenging." At worst, they call it vile, contemptible; guilty of trafficking in cliche, crowding legitimate literature out of the marketplace, and purveying a questionable values system in which only marriage and childbirth confer status and meaning.'

'In spite of the hand-wringing and name-calling, chick lit has flourished, moving beyond the singleton in the big city to encompass stories about married women, mothers, and widows, spawning memoirs and cookbooks and how-to guides, often showcasing more diversity than the higher pedigree works do. There are chick lit novels featuring Hindi brides in arranged marriages, black women, and Latinas.'

She ends the article with a review of Plum Sykes' The Debutante Divorcee, describing it as 'as addictive and airy as Pringles' before going on to say, 'Not that there's anything wrong with that. Some days it's "War and Peace - or nothing," some days it's the fantasy of a world you'll never do more than gawk at; some days it's the comfort of a tale where wonderful things happen to a girl who's a lot like you.'

There's yet more common sense in her author bio: 'There's a sense within the publishing community that perhaps they've overpublished the Bridget Jones-clone kind of book. I think there's going to be a sort of course correction where publishers are going to be a lot more picky, and the books that are going to make it to the marketplace are going to be of really good quality and feature distinct, fresh voices.'

Let's hope so.

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