I was attracted to James Collins' debut novel Beginner's Greek because of... well, can you guess? Yep, the cover. Any book with New York on the cover will call to me. Put my favourite, the Chrysler Building, on there and I'm pretty much sold.
It sounds good too. It's the story of Peter Russell, who works for a prestigious financial firm on Wall Street, and Holly Edwards, who teaches Latin at a private girls' school. When Peter and Holly sit next to each other on a plane journey, "an intoxicating tale of romance, coincidence and thwarted plans starts to unfold".
But that's not why I'm telling you about it.
I'm telling you about it because it was reviewed in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. As Jennifer Weiner has pointed out on a number of occasions, the NYT doesn't review chick lit.
And yet the reviewer, James Caplan, describes Beginner's Greek as "Part comedy of manners, part chick lit in male drag ... a great big sunny lemon chiffon pie of a novel." (He also describes James Collins as "intelligent, rather aristocratic, ruggedly handsome", but that's another story.)
So it looks like chick lit. It sounds like chick lit. But it's not chick lit. Why not? Ah. Because it's too good:
One of the great pleasures of this novel — and what sets it quite apart from chick lit — is the sheer felicity of its prose. I am certain Collins could write virtually from birth, but as a middle-aged first novelist, he brings burnished style, wisdom and compassion to the enterprise. Speaking of the wrong woman Peter has married, the writer conveys in a single sentence — “He could not think of a single reason not to have married her” — a whole universe of wistful comedy.
"He could not think of a single reason not to have married her"? That's what sets it apart from chick lit?
One wonders just how much chick lit Mr Caplan has actually read...
Related posts: If it's good it can't be chick lit | More "chick" and less "lit" | Old timey chick lit bashing
