Chick-lit rebranded: but is it still rubbish?
Grab your fluffy pink Manolos, Bridget (OK, Peacocks knock-offs you bought in the sales with the manky straps) and stab yourself to death with them, quick: chick-lit - whoop! – has being rebranded. Why? To give it better literary credentials, dammit. And, yes, my instant reaction to this news is to waggle my fingers behind my ears and loll my tongue like a BSG-riddled cow, but now The Guardian have gone and ruined my fun by telling me about the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance.
What is the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance? It's a £5,000, Tesco-sponsored award for comedy romance of course, and Joanna Trollope helped judge it, and defended the prize in a Guardian blog. And this week, the JK Rowling of chick-lit, Lisa Jewell, won it for her sixth novel, 31 Dream Street. For those who might want it, here's the cover (and those of a delicate constitution should hold in the vom):
Lisa was naturally dead pleased with the gong, saying: "The award is definitely something the genre needs, and more importantly is something the reader needs. People say 'chick lit' and what they mean is 'crap'. And so even though you might sell 100,000 copies of a book, you're never going to win a prize."
And she continued, even more pertinently, "these are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them."
Which, obviously, is true. And while I turn puce when confronted with a sea of pink covers festooned by skyscraping shoes and cartoons of marshmallow-brained women, and despair at the "ooh, there's a pwince on a horse out there for you, my pwecious" denouements, I've no problem with entertainment and escapism – if I did, I'd be a right boring bastard. And *gets out hairshirt* I've enjoyed some chick-lit in my time too, although stuff of a filthier nature, admittedly – Louise Bagshawe's Jackie Collins-lite, and Carol Wolper's pervy The Cigarette Girl. Oof, is it hot in here?
All this leads me to a question, readers: am I right to think that chick-lit is only good if it's got half a brain and some shagging? Or is it redeemable? And if so, how would you defend it – and what books would you recommend?
Fillums
For a bit of fluff, chicklit/poplit is fine. It can make people laugh and cry, a drab journey on a bus can go that bit quicker, but it's not serious literature. It will not last the ages like say Tolstoy or Flaubert (with whom, for some unintelligable reason, Joanna Trollope compared modern romcom writers) and nor should it. It's there for entertainment. Christ isn't that enough?
I get so annoyed with these authors banging on that they don't get taken seriously as novelists. They have the sales and the money, but not the acclaim? Pity poor them. They aren't writing 'literature' - and I don't know why they persist in saying they are. They should simply be proud of the fact they make people laugh and cry, which is pretty laudable in and of itself, and when they're feeling low about not winning the Booker, they can always remind themselves of how fricking rich they are.
Hmmm
But what about the school of thought that says, "Many many women buy and enjoy romance novels. Does that mean they're all stupid?"
Ages ago I remember reading a study which looked at the way women read and *used* romance novels, and there was nothing dumb or unknowing about it. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Dear Author are good places to start.
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