I originally titled this "Chick lit can be good... when it's written by a man", but then, when I searched, I found that I'd already written a post with a very similar title: Some chick lit is good... when it's written by a man. That particular post was about Nick Hornby's How to be Good, which, the writer decided, is chick lit, but *good* chick lit (it's not chick lit and, according to our commenters, is not good).
Oh and then there was James Collins' Beginners Greek. which, according to The New York Times Sunday Book Review looks like chick lit, sounds like chick lit, but isn't chick lit. Why not? Because it's too good.
So what's rattled my cage this time?
Alex Coleman's The Bright Side. I read it. I loved it. Part-way through reading it, I discovered it had actually been written by a man. Before I learned that, I hadn't been thinking, "Gosh, this is good. This is so good, a woman couldn't have written it. It's too insightful! Too honest!" And yet...
In reviewing it for the Irish Independent, John Spain wrote:
This summer's most interesting chicklit novel The Bright Side has three things that make it different from the competition. First, the writing is brilliant. Second, it is bluntly honest about sex and relationships in a way that most chicklit novels are not. Third, it was written by a man.
Most chick lit novels are not honest about sex and relationships? One has to wonder what chick lit novels John Spain has read, no? After describing the opening scene of the book, in which Jackie finds her husband having it away with their next door neighbour, Spain writes:
It is direct, factual and sharply observant in a way that the average three-best-friends chicklit novel never is. It does not have the romantic gloss that surrounds most chicklit novels even when they're claiming to be telling it like it really is.
Again. What chick lit novels has he read?
Poolbeg, who published The Bright Side, admitted that it probably wouldn't have been given a fair reading had they known on submission that the author was a man. I have to say, I would bet my collection of Marian Keyes books that John Spain's review of The Bright Side would have been rather different if he'd believed the author to be a woman.
