It’s time to reclaim the c-word!
But when I started writing grown-up novels, I was adamant that I didn’t write chick lit. Oh, no. I wrote about relationships, not romance. My stories were deeply layered and referenced high-faluting things like Virago Modern Classics and Lawrence Sterne’s famous stream of consciousness novel,. I was never going to write anything as chick litty as a straightforward happy ending where the hero and heroine declared their love.Again, I got over myself.
The sublime Marian Keyes’s Rachel’s Holiday taught me about addiction and how to write difficult heroines. Lisa Jewell’s early novels like the wonderfulalways remind me of my giddy, misspent twenties and more recently, Mhairi McFarlane and Lindsey Kelk’s smart, edgy romances can be relied upon to lift me out of whatever funk I’m in.Chick lit are stories all about the complex ways that women live and love and interact with the world.
But what all chick lit has in common is that these books are cheerleaders for women, albeit cheerleaders made of paper and ink. In every chick lit book I’ve read, women are in control of their own destinies, even if they don’t realise it to begin with. These heroines don’t need to be saved or rescued because they can do a pretty good job of it all by themselves. They enjoy having sex with attractive men and they get their happy ever after because they deserve one. We all do.
Which is one of the reasons why I think chick lit is having something of a renaissance. Or rather, people are happily out and proud about their love of the genre and it’s being championed in all sorts of wonderful ways. Like author Caroline O’Donoghue’s Sentimental Garbage podcast, where writers such as Ella Risbridger and Ayisha Malik pick their favourite chick lit novels (
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