In defence of Chick-Lit

This Booker prize winning book is definitely not chick-lit, but only because the author is a man.

There has been a flurry of activity in the media and the social networking sites with regard to criticism about the ratio of book reviews for male and female authors in the New York Times, a fact that is doubtless replicated in the UK broadsheets. Despite the apparent fact that more women than men buy novels, there are far more reviews of books written by men than women, and that is compounded by the fact that there are far more male reviewers than female. I guess that even though we are ten years into the 21st century there is still a lot of catching up to do in terms of literary equality. Whilst this situation might be annoying to some people, there are others who will think – so what? There are also others that would wholeheartedly approve. There are a surprising number of people who despise women’s literature, and more shockingly some of these people are women.

I will never forget the moment, a few years ago, when I met a woman at a party, who was roughly my age, had a similar job and seemed, superficially at least, a perfectly pleasant and normal person, and she liked reading so I thought she would be an interesting person to strike up a conversation with. Until she said with some venom,“I never read books written by women; they’re all rubbish.” I tackled her on this rather bizarre statement (after I had regained the power of speech) and wondered whether she was referring to just romantic literature. But no, she meant what she had said; she despised all literature by women, regardless of the genre. I think that pretty much ended the conversation.

I have heard this kind of comment depressingly frequently, more often by men, but sometimes other women have expressed similar sentiments. I find this kind of literary snobbishness and sexism rather bizarre. It’s not as if someone can be a better writer on the basis of their gender alone, and it is probably safe to say that anyone who has such a narrow minded view of literature cannot have genuinely read very much, so it is best just to feel sorry for them.

But even within fairly intellectual circles there is often a low regard for the genre of women’s literature that is often called chick-lit. Even some women writers are insulted when their novels are put into this category by reviewers. It is seen as demeaning, but I fail to see what the problem is with being assigned to this category of writers. They are amongst the most commercially successful writers, and have huge appeal to the types of people that buy the most books. So where is the problem? Oh yes, it might be the word commercial. That appears to be another slander upon the writer who wants to get serious. As if the idea of selling many of your books is seen as some kind of artistic sell-out and that the writer must give up any hope of credibility if they become popular. It reminds me of the conversations I had in my youth, with earnest young men (usually) who would complain about some band they used to love, back in the day before they sold their souls to a record label and hit the big time.

I like chick-lit. I don’t read it all the time, but it does add some light relief to a busy life. I think I enjoyed it most of all when I was studying for my degree. Sometimes, when you are studying gory subjects like funerary and burial archaeology, you need to turn to something just a little bit sweeter.

Anyway, just for the record I can think of quite a few male writers that could be confused with chick-lit authors, if the names were withheld - Nick Hornby, Tony Parsons, Mike Gayle or Roddy Doyle to name but a few. The usual defining ingredient in a chick-lit novel is the exploration of a relationship between a man and a woman.

On Chesil Beach anyone?