Chick lit has its place. On long-haul flights, for example, when you’re a bit pissed and bored with the films on offer, and all you wanted is some literary fast food. I recall one flight back from Colorado where I read Bridget Jones’s Diary from start to finish with it hidden between the covers of a National Geographic in case it were assumed I was a single, lonely chocolate-head who flashed her knickers at work.
Don’t get me wrong. I like that sort of woman. I’m not being snobby about crap books. It’s just that all mass-produced products created for women (excluding sanitary protection) tends to be twee or schmaltzy. The basic chick-lit plot centres on getting a man, keeping a man or coping with a man when he leaves you/is being a total bell end.
Publishers must have realised they’re losing out on my demographic (rabid, feminist, middle-aged lesbians who hate literary fiction but dislike being spoon-fed slush) so came up with Gone Girl, which has since given birth to several litters-worth of similar but inferior types.
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