George Orwell painted an unappetising picture of the typical book reviewer:
It is the job of this bedraggled creature to invent reactions towards ‘books about which he has no spontaneous feelings whatever’.He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak he will be suffering from a hangover.
I’m not sure why Orwell’s hapless reviewer came to mind while I was reading The Wives of Bath. ‘Chick lit’, a new and popular genre, apparently invented in Britain, is not aimed at balding, varicose, depressed men. It is aimed at women, like me, who have more than a passing interest in romance, dieting, babies, shoes, marriage and hand-bags. At its best, the writing is bubbly and frivolous. It has been described as ‘having a best friend tell you about her life’.
Does it stand up as good writing, though? Would it cheer Orwell’s jaded reviewer, sending him out into the world spruced and hopeful, or would it make him even more despondent?
Wendy Holden has written five best- selling novels already. The Wives of Bath will surely sell well too, though it is perhaps not so much lit for chicks as for broody hens. The story is about Amanda and Alice, high-fliers grounded by motherhood, and their husbands Hugo and Jake. These four meet at a prenatal group in Bath, but Amanda and Alice have ‘history’, as it were. They both used to work for a New York fashion magazine where Amanda was a features writer, cruel and with a lofty disregard for libel laws.
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