In Praise of Chick Lit

What feels fresh is some of the chick lit out there. Combine that humor and sharp wit with serious reflections, and you can get some popular powerful literature. “Serious” literature, no less. Unfortunately, too much of critically acclaimed literature is drab and devoid of humor. Maybe it could do “serious” writers good to read some British chick lit.

Oh, I’m not putting down American chick lit either. I do wonder though whether it’s rightfully called “chick lit.” It’s more like light reading on serious subjects. Which is fun but not quite as fun as British chick lit. And it doesn’t inspire you the way “serious” literature does, either. Still, I do enjoy Emily Giffin’s writing, and have enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert’s novels Love, Eat, Pray and Committed as well. But when it comes to contemporary American literature, I prefer to read John Updike, Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Amy Bloom, Marisa Silver, Ha Jin, and other greats or greats-in-the-making, including certain science fiction authors. (I've been getting my dose of American humor on TV but I’m becoming more and more interested in discovering contemporary American writers with a comedic style. Been reading about it.)

At the moment my light reading comes from this side of the ocean. I also found Australian writer Toni Jordan’s book Fall Girl to be a treat. And yes, as much as I love chick lit, I am not done enjoying American lighter fare in the shape of “American chick lit” or great biographies, such as Charles S. Cross’s book Heavier than Heaven about Kurt Cobain, for instance.

But this page should be about chick lit, so here are some of my favorite chick lit books, British, American, and Australian.

I then went on to read The Undomestic Goddess. Still funny, but not magical.

Another very popular British chick lit author is Catherine Alliott. The first book of hers that I read was The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton. It’s a touching story and yet the main character is ditzy and quite fancifully put together, and that whole combination doesn't work perfectly throughout the novel. Catherine Alliott's style of over-the-top comedy also gets tired after a while.

While I enjoy Catherine Alliott's writing, what I didn't appreciate was the way in which, despite the variations in plot, they end up rather formulaic in terms of settings and characterization. Her female protagonist had a job in the city, met her husband, moved to a nice place near the city, had children, and then separated from her husband and moved to the country. She pulls off some great moments, whether laugh-out-loud or heartfelt, but after a while I found myself reading her books more for her descriptions of English life in the countryside.

Okay, moving over to the US now. The first American chick lit book I read was Emily Giffin’s Heart of the Matter.

Emily Giffin writes well. She writes softly from a place of deep feeling, beguiling you from one sentence to the next. It was one of the books I couldn't put down because of her mellifluous writing and her treatment of the main characters, and yet all the while I was reading I kept wishing for more narrative lines, more humor, and more development of even the main characters.

Still, the story stayed with me and somehow seemed as real as life. It felt like spending time with a mother and child going through a dark time. The romance was wonderful too. Mature, deep, and moving.

True, the way the book is set up, with chapters dedicated, in turn, to the story and viewpoint of the two women protagonists, Tessa and Valerie, is too easy, and not carefully thought out: if the narrator's voice is Tessa in the Tessa chapters, then how come she's omniscient about Valerie? Also, the story is rather simple in the end. While I like a simple story if it’s done masterfully, as The Catcher in the Rye for instance, when you have light reading without too many twists and turns, The Heart of the Matter seems too facile even for chick lit. Did I mention the book is low on the laughs? But then again, that’s American chick lit for you.

As I said, I have no idea why Emily Giffin's Heart of the Matter is called chick lit. Elizabeth Gilbert and many female American authors are right to question the label. They do it as far as it might apply or not to their own writing, but the crux of the matter is that there really is no chick lit in America. American writers could adapt the British chick lit model to American-style humor but for some reason they don't.

While there are American women writers with a comedic mind out there, those who set out to write about young women, their love life and relationships, and their life at work don’t do it humorously and lightheartedly enough, which is what makes chick lit chick lit. So, there you go, I managed to define chick lit eventually. And no, there’s not a lot of sex in it. Chick lit is about humor and relationships and love and keeping things light.