My friends are sometimes serial offenders. “She writes chick-lit,” they’ll say to someone at a party when introducing me, “She gets mad with that label, but ya (to me) I don’t know what else to call it!” Embarrassed, I scuff my toe across the floor, unwilling to make this a Whole Big Conversation about my writing, and me and rapidly change the subject. Even if the listener is interested, I just rap out, “Yeah, three novels. So what do you do?”
So what’s chick lit?
Here’s what Sophie Kinsella, author of the wildly successful Confessions Of A Shopaholic series among others had to say about the subject of chick lit: “I always thought 'chick lit' meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it's not the ideal term; when I'm asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that's what I feel they are. But I'm quite pragmatic.”
Kinsella quite often is held up as a shining example of the “chick lit” camp, her heroine Becky Bloomwood is clumsy, lovely and prone to getting into vast amounts of trouble, saved by her boyfriend-turned-husband Luke Brandon, who is smart, polished and intellectual. The exact opposite of her, so you’re meant to wonder: what does he see in her? And: oh, maybe there’s someone like that out there for me too?
The books focus on Becky’s character development, as each story goes on, you learn that she’s a good friend, a caring daughter, and yes, an excellent wife. All sorts of challenges are thrown at her through the series – at one point, she discovers she has a secret half-sister, the complete opposite of Becky in every way, but being Becky, she embraces this person head-on, even when Jess (the sister) is trying to push her away, ending with trying to climb a mountain three months pregnant to find her.
It’s not always that Becky is getting into trouble – this is what the dissenters don’t get – it’s why she gets into trouble in the first place. And sure, there is romance, but only in the first book! After that she is loyal and monogamous to her partner, even though he has one or two moments of weakness.
By the end of the series, you’re left with the impression that friends are more important than your career and that sometimes parenting and being married is hard and this may not be high literature, but I fail to see how that takes away from its literary merit. Shopaholic is well-written, punchy and smart with a real narrator at the centre of it, and for that it deserves to be read by a lot wider audience than just being slapped on with a pink cover and shunted into a certain corner of the bookstore.
Meanwhile, closer home…
Perhaps you’re finding it hard to summon up pity for Kinsella with her billion-dollar advances and what not. Let’s move closer to home. Over the last year, I read two books by young Indian authors that were funny, smart and, yes, had romance in them.
One was Half Love Half Arranged by Itisha Peerbhoy. About a marriage-obssessed plump woman, this dealt neatly with lesbianism, parental expectations, sex before marriage and the weird people you meet out there when you’re looking to settle down. It was hilarious, and with its pretty green cover featuring an anonymous set of hands picking at a flower, with the title spelt out in pretty font, very clearly in the “chick lit” bracket.
The other book was Close To Home by Parvati Sharma, which talked about lesbianism (hey!), parental expectations (hey hey!), marriage and searching for something outside yourself. Also very funny. The difference was that Sharma’s book takes itself seriously, came out in hardback, and has anonymous hands on the cover (clasping a martini). But when you examine the blurbs of both books, you’ll realise what I mean.
While Peerbhoy’s book has a blurb by fellow “chick lit” author Kiran Manral: “Wickedly funny account of trying to find true love the arranged marriage way.” Sharma’s book has blurbs from “serious” writers like Bapsi Sidhwa and Girish Karnad as well as pull quotes from “serious” publications like The Hindu and Tehelka (with Open and Mid-Day thrown in to balance.) Sharma’s blurbs all deal with her writing: “sensitive, sensuous” “delicacy with which [Sharma] weaves her worlds” “prose shorn of the sentimental” and so on. Peerbhoy’s two blurbs talk about how funny she is.
The “less-than” label
All of which proves that the labels are ultimately the publishers’ fault. By choosing to stick a hardback on Sharma, they increased the price; by increasing the price they said, “This book is to be taken more seriously than the fluff” which is what makes it sit in the literary fiction section of your bookstore away from its cousins in pink whom, you, as a serious reader, might avoid entirely. It is a way of classification that books about the personal development of men never get – oh, spare me that tired trope of “lad lit” being a thing, I’ll believe it when I see people referring to it as that as a practice.
There is nothing wrong with labels as a rule – I appreciate knowing where the historical fiction is, where the non-fiction is, because that deals with content whereas by calling something “chick lit” you are classifying it by gender which is doing some of that genre a great disservice. One might argue that “chick lit” features a certain kind of girl, but that ship has sailed, my friends, that cliché no longer holds true, and if it does, you won’t find it in the chick lit section, you’ll have to wander all the way over to romance. No other genre is so shamelessly and blatantly held up by its ovaries and thrust at us: look, here is what you want to read, it’s for girls, you’ll like it.
There’s this whole thing surrounding the Pink Covers as well – that it’s less-than. Less than the literary fiction smirking at it. Less than the non-fiction which doesn’t even care. Chick lit is quick, absorbing reading, but since when is that a sign of an inferior writer? Haven’t you always remembered most those books which engrossed you from start to finish?
Readers love Bridget Jones, they love Becky Bloomwood, they love the Walsh family. I’ve seen the way readers in India fangirl over the fantastically humorous Anuja Chauhan.
This kind of love and devotion, do you think it’s stupid? Do you think readers like this are dumb for not loving oh, Anna Karenina? (A doomed “chick lit” novel if I ever saw one. Here’s a tip, Tolstoy, next time try redeeming your heroine instead of killing her off.)
No, I don’t believe in the label “chick lit.” If anything that is dumb. That is lazy. And it is dangerous, because the longer it is out there, the more you are missing out on some fantastic books to read.
You need a new phrase to describe the books you like? Here’s one – “commercial fiction”. You’re welcome.
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of three books with her fourth, Before And Then After, a collection of short stories, out in 2015.
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So what’s chick lit?
Here’s what Sophie Kinsella, author of the wildly successful Confessions Of A Shopaholic series among others had to say about the subject of chick lit: “I always thought 'chick lit' meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it's not the ideal term; when I'm asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that's what I feel they are. But I'm quite pragmatic.”
Kinsella quite often is held up as a shining example of the “chick lit” camp, her heroine Becky Bloomwood is clumsy, lovely and prone to getting into vast amounts of trouble, saved by her boyfriend-turned-husband Luke Brandon, who is smart, polished and intellectual. The exact opposite of her, so you’re meant to wonder: what does he see in her? And: oh, maybe there’s someone like that out there for me too?
The books focus on Becky’s character development, as each story goes on, you learn that she’s a good friend, a caring daughter, and yes, an excellent wife. All sorts of challenges are thrown at her through the series – at one point, she discovers she has a secret half-sister, the complete opposite of Becky in every way, but being Becky, she embraces this person head-on, even when Jess (the sister) is trying to push her away, ending with trying to climb a mountain three months pregnant to find her.
It’s not always that Becky is getting into trouble – this is what the dissenters don’t get – it’s why she gets into trouble in the first place. And sure, there is romance, but only in the first book! After that she is loyal and monogamous to her partner, even though he has one or two moments of weakness.
By the end of the series, you’re left with the impression that friends are more important than your career and that sometimes parenting and being married is hard and this may not be high literature, but I fail to see how that takes away from its literary merit. Shopaholic is well-written, punchy and smart with a real narrator at the centre of it, and for that it deserves to be read by a lot wider audience than just being slapped on with a pink cover and shunted into a certain corner of the bookstore.
Meanwhile, closer home…
Perhaps you’re finding it hard to summon up pity for Kinsella with her billion-dollar advances and what not. Let’s move closer to home. Over the last year, I read two books by young Indian authors that were funny, smart and, yes, had romance in them.
One was Half Love Half Arranged by Itisha Peerbhoy. About a marriage-obssessed plump woman, this dealt neatly with lesbianism, parental expectations, sex before marriage and the weird people you meet out there when you’re looking to settle down. It was hilarious, and with its pretty green cover featuring an anonymous set of hands picking at a flower, with the title spelt out in pretty font, very clearly in the “chick lit” bracket.
The other book was Close To Home by Parvati Sharma, which talked about lesbianism (hey!), parental expectations (hey hey!), marriage and searching for something outside yourself. Also very funny. The difference was that Sharma’s book takes itself seriously, came out in hardback, and has anonymous hands on the cover (clasping a martini). But when you examine the blurbs of both books, you’ll realise what I mean.
While Peerbhoy’s book has a blurb by fellow “chick lit” author Kiran Manral: “Wickedly funny account of trying to find true love the arranged marriage way.” Sharma’s book has blurbs from “serious” writers like Bapsi Sidhwa and Girish Karnad as well as pull quotes from “serious” publications like The Hindu and Tehelka (with Open and Mid-Day thrown in to balance.) Sharma’s blurbs all deal with her writing: “sensitive, sensuous” “delicacy with which [Sharma] weaves her worlds” “prose shorn of the sentimental” and so on. Peerbhoy’s two blurbs talk about how funny she is.
The “less-than” label
All of which proves that the labels are ultimately the publishers’ fault. By choosing to stick a hardback on Sharma, they increased the price; by increasing the price they said, “This book is to be taken more seriously than the fluff” which is what makes it sit in the literary fiction section of your bookstore away from its cousins in pink whom, you, as a serious reader, might avoid entirely. It is a way of classification that books about the personal development of men never get – oh, spare me that tired trope of “lad lit” being a thing, I’ll believe it when I see people referring to it as that as a practice.
There is nothing wrong with labels as a rule – I appreciate knowing where the historical fiction is, where the non-fiction is, because that deals with content whereas by calling something “chick lit” you are classifying it by gender which is doing some of that genre a great disservice. One might argue that “chick lit” features a certain kind of girl, but that ship has sailed, my friends, that cliché no longer holds true, and if it does, you won’t find it in the chick lit section, you’ll have to wander all the way over to romance. No other genre is so shamelessly and blatantly held up by its ovaries and thrust at us: look, here is what you want to read, it’s for girls, you’ll like it.
There’s this whole thing surrounding the Pink Covers as well – that it’s less-than. Less than the literary fiction smirking at it. Less than the non-fiction which doesn’t even care. Chick lit is quick, absorbing reading, but since when is that a sign of an inferior writer? Haven’t you always remembered most those books which engrossed you from start to finish?
Readers love Bridget Jones, they love Becky Bloomwood, they love the Walsh family. I’ve seen the way readers in India fangirl over the fantastically humorous Anuja Chauhan.
This kind of love and devotion, do you think it’s stupid? Do you think readers like this are dumb for not loving oh, Anna Karenina? (A doomed “chick lit” novel if I ever saw one. Here’s a tip, Tolstoy, next time try redeeming your heroine instead of killing her off.)
No, I don’t believe in the label “chick lit.” If anything that is dumb. That is lazy. And it is dangerous, because the longer it is out there, the more you are missing out on some fantastic books to read.
You need a new phrase to describe the books you like? Here’s one – “commercial fiction”. You’re welcome.
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of three books with her fourth, Before And Then After, a collection of short stories, out in 2015.
