‘Chick lit’ is simply slang for ‘women’s literature’: books written by women, about women, for women. But it is often derogatory, implying ‘bad female writers’ and ‘stupid female readers’ (according to Urban Dictionary). Chick lit is the book world’s equivalent of Sex in the City or Ugly Betty at best, and Footballer’s Wives or a lobotomy at worst. It is debatable whether chick lit is ‘lit’ at all, but if you lock away your inner snob, these books can be entertaining, enjoyable escapism.
Vintage chicks
Originally a column in the Independent, Bridget Jones’s Diary is now a cultural artefact of cosmopolitan 90s life and the rise of ‘Champagne Socialism’. Helen Fielding’s books are much wittier and more intelligent than the films, but just as vibrant. I cringe every time I read it, but there is a little of her in every girl who wishes for a Mark Darcy to save her from a certain fate involving Alsatians...
Unashamed chicks
I don’t wish to exclude the male reader, but the following recommendations are deliciously, indulgently girly. In Lucia Lucia, Adriana Trigiani brings 1950s New York’s Uptown glamour and Greenwich Village charm into full Technicolor life. Eva Rice does the same for Britain’s glitzy post-war aristocracy in The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets. You will want to put on a pretty dress and live in the past.
Just great lit
The term ‘chick lit’ does put off many readers, but these modern female writers do not deserve to be consigned to the trashier shelves of Waterstone's. Audrey Niffennegger underplays The Time Traveller’s Wife’s central science-fiction concept with human warmth and sympathy. Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love is as ambitious as its title: it is also simply beautiful and heartbreakingly bleak. Forget the chick lit clichés – this is unflinching and uncompromising literature.
This article was originally published in Epigram (Issue 236, 07/03/2011, p. 20).
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