chick lit (book #102)

This is the second post I've written about defining chick lit... Why do I care?

102. The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank ***1/2

I liked The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank's first book, which is credited as one of the first chick lit books, but I'm not sure I would put it in that category. Sure it's a book with a 20-30-something female protagonist that focusses on relationships, but I would tend to classify the genre by tone, rather than content. Of course, certain content tends to go with that particular superficial tone, so any book which name drops designer fashion/shoe/make-up brands and/or introduces a straight, male best friend in the first few chapters has a hard time avoiding the chick lit label*. One of the things in The Wonder Spot's favour is that Sophie is kind of socially awkward (which is obviously why I liked her), so her low opinion of herself isn't just a set up for pseudo-character development later in the book.

Curtis Sittenfeld's review, in which she called The Wonder Spot chick lit, seems especially harsh, given that the book it reminded me of most was her own novel, The Man of My Dreams. It wasn't until I'd googled to see whether that book had also been denounced as chick lit that I remembered reading this review. Both books are structured as a series of stories chronicling different stages (and relationships) in one woman's life, as she grows from awkward teen to slightly-more-confident adult. Sittenfeld does make a similar point to mine about tone ("it's not that I find Bank's topic lightweight; it's that Bank writes about it in a lightweight way"), but I fail to see how Bank's writing is any more lightweight than her own (I'm assuming she would not make the same criticism of The Man of My Dreams).

Bookworm just** read Bridget Jones' Diary (somewhat under duress) and sums up the problem with Chick Lit, thusly:

other genres typically have something going for them above and beyond the superficial, meritless, sexist stuff: suspense, or an interesting thought experiment, or some kind of cool gimmick or plot device. Whereas chick lit has nothing.

And in a comment: "if it has interesting insights it must not be chick lit". I initially thought I agreed with this comment, but now I'm not quite sure. Marian Keyes books are clearly chick lit, but I think at least some of her books contain interesting insights. Rachel's Holiday deals with Rachel almost dying of an overdose and having to face the great abyss inside herself where any sense of self-worth might be and there are genuinely painful and real moments in the book. Ultimately, however, what places the book firmly in chick lit territory is that her recovery seems secondary to the more comic subplots involving spending too much and winning (back) her man. Again, I think it comes down to tone. Chick lit comes across as farcical rather than realistic; more the zany, madcap antics of a caricature, than a real person's life.

Maybe there really are people whose love of shopping and obsession with appearances overshadow any moments of self-reflection, but I expect real literature to delve deeper into a character's motivation than the usual "I want everyone to like me because I have low self-esteem, but now that I've found someone who loves me for me, I'll live happily ever after". Perhaps the ability of a book to be accurately summarised by that sentence is a good test for chick lit, although even the admission of low self-esteem might be a bit perceptive for some books.

I went through a phase of reading chick lit when I was 18-ish that was sparked by Rachel's Holiday. Rachel was sufficiently messed up for me to identify with, but it had a nice happy ending and I really wanted some hope (however fictional) that messed up people could have happy endings, too. Eventually I got sick of the portrayal of women as obsessed with their appearance and incapable of living within their means, as well as the fact that their low self-esteem was sign-posted by making them incredibly beautiful and talented, but somehow unaware of it. Sittenfeld's definition of chick lit is that "its appeal relies so much on how closely readers relate to its protagonist". Perhaps I'd have a higher opinion of the genre if I could identify more with the superficial aspects of the characters, or if their lifestyle were more appealling to me. (Given the fact that my reading preferences are based largely on being able to identify with the characters, her characterisation makes me feel superficial, too.)

Minor spoilers for both the Wonder Spot and The Man of My Dreams: Sittenfeld also claims that The Wonder Spot satisfies the genre-defining condition of having the main character end up with a man, but I'm not convinced it does. Chick lit characters end up with The One; Sophie is with someone on the final page, true, but not someone noticeably more permanent than any of the men on the preceding pages. TMoMD's Hannah may have been single at the end of her book, but that now seems more like an intentional point of distinction than a difference in principle.

I don't want to claim The Wonder Spot isn't chick lit just because I liked it. At the same time, I don't feel I can give it more than 3.5 stars precisely because it did come a little too close.



*substitute gay for straight and these are the reasons Alternatives to Sex came across as chick lit.
**Well, she had just read it when I first started this post...