If you don't read chick lit, you shouldn't really criticise it

Yep, I'm cross again. One of my biggest pet peeves is people criticising chick lit when they quite clearly haven't read any (or at least not much).

In Rachel Kramer Bussel's Huffington Post interview with Anna David, author of Party Girl, David says,

To me, chick lit describes the kind of book that focuses on a girl with very simple and superficial needs─there doesn't tend to be a great deal of subtext, the characters don't seem very nuanced and the biggest lesson is often that a girl is much happier when she has a guy.

Here I wrote a book about the most important and profound experience I'd ever had─getting and staying sober─and it's being categorized among books about wearing Manolo Blahniks while trying to land a guy?

Do you want to send her a copy of Rachel's Holiday or shall I?

DIANE SHIPLEY

Grr, agh, grr, splutter (repeat ad infinitum...)

Keris

I also love how she never had a problem about the term "chick lit" in general, only when it was applied to her book. Grrr.

Iva-Marie

The other thing I love is that David assumes her book is more weighty than others because her character does a lot of drugs and goes to rehab. But she&#39s still trying to sell it with the superficial -- she doesn&#39t hesitate to mention (early and often) mind you, that she was a celebrity journalist in Hollywood. Too, even if a book is lighter, I&#39d like to tell her, it doesn&#39t make it any easier to write. Doing comedy well and making your characters both real and funny is tough, even if their problems aren&#39t headline-making. I think it would be much easier to give characters a resume of every drink and drug dependency in the book and call that "real", "heavy" or whatever David is trying to say her book is.

Lucie Simone

So, so true, Keris! Chick Lit is not about finding a guy, it&#39s about finding your way in life. I really don&#39t know why everyone thinks that if a book written by a woman containing elements such as friendship, sexual expression, love, etc. are fivolous. And many, many chick lit books deal with very heavy issues such as alcohol abuse, mental illness, eating disorders, etc. The only thing is they do it with humor. Sheesh!

If you don't read chick lit, you shouldn't really criticise it

If you don't read chick lit, you shouldn't really criticise it - Comments

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