It's been a long time since Yay or Nay has focussed on a specific book and I struggled to think of one likely to divide opinion, but finally I thought, "A-ha!" - Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, a collection of linked stories about life and love centered around a woman named Jane.
This book came out right at the beginning of the chick lit explosion, but - unlike the majority of chick lit - was both a commercial and critical success. By the time Bank released her second book, The Wonder Spot, chick lit had become so ubiquitous and derided that fellow author Curtis Sittenfeld felt comfortable beginning her review of that book with the words, "To suggest that another woman's ostensibly literary novel is chick lit feels catty, not unlike calling another woman a slut - doesn't the term basically bring down all of us? And yet, with The Wonder Spot, it's hard to resist."
So this week's question is in two parts - one easy, one harder. First: The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Yay or Nay and why? Second: is it chick lit?
[Don't forget it's Yay or Nay day at Hippyshopper, Bridalwave, Corrie Blog, Catwalk Queen, Kiss and Makeup, The Bag Lady, Shoewawa and Shiny Shiny, too!]
