I started to read the Daily Mail's review of Marian Keyes' This Charming Man with trepidation. It was in the Daily Mail after all - not a paper that's known for its enlightened views on women.
To begin with, I was pleasantly surprised:
"Chick-lit, like the better class of real chicks, is no longer battery-farmed. It has lost its bland and uniform Wet-Woman-In-Bedsit-Waiting-For-Mr-Right aspects and gone free-range over all sorts of territory — some of it dark and violent."
It's good to know that someone has noticed that chick lit has moved on. And yet...
"This Charming Man ... is about women who've received nasty knocks as well, although this time from the man they love.
Mr Wrong. Domestic violence. Hit lit, I suppose you could call it."
Wow. "Hit lit." That's not at all flippant.
(Just in case you think I'm over-reacting, two women are killed every week by their partner or ex-partner, and almost one in two women has experienced some form of domestic violence. There are almost 13 million incidents of domestic violence annually in the UK, and it is estimated that an incident of domestic abuse occurs every six to 20 seconds.)
But it was the Daily Mail. I couldn't be too shocked. Until I noticed the byline. The review was written by chick lit author Wendy Holden. How disappointing.
