Summer in the city

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Chick or not chick

Melissa Bank is one of the two authors credited with inadvertently launching the “chick lit” craze in the late 1990s. The other author is, of course, Helen Fielding of “Bridget Jones” fame. (There were Ally McBeal episodes before that, as well as “Cathy” cartoons, but those characters failed to unionize.) Since then, the genre has helped a lot of us gals get into print, given thousands of women novels they can relate to, and provided reliable beach reading. It’s also caused a bit of a debate, since some folks believe the term is demeaning. I don’t, really; it’s marketing. If it gets a book into readers’ hands, they can decide what they want to call it.

Melissa Bank’s new novel, “The Wonder Spot,” was reviewed prominently in the Times Book Review this weekend. The reviewer, Curtis Sittenfeld (“Prep”) spent most of the review explaining why Bank’s novel is “chick lit” and not literary fiction. I bet a few people will complain about this, but it was a pretty well-written review. Her point was that (oh yeah, Curtis Sittenfeld is a she, for those who don’t know) Bank’s book was great fun to read, but doesn’t transcend the genre.

Since there are always questions about what “chick lit” is, here are a few excerpts of the review:

“To suggest that another woman’s ostensibly literary novel is chick lit feels catty, not unlike calling another woman a slut – doesn’t the term basically bring down all of us? And yet, with ‘The Wonder Spot,’ it’s hard to resist. A chronicle of the search for personal equilibrium and Mr. Right, Melissa Bank’s novel is highly readable, sometimes funny and entirely unchallenging; you’re not one iota smarter after finishing it.”

So is that bad? If a novel is easy to read and uses simple language, does that place it squarely in genre fiction?

Not always. Sittenfeld elucidates:

“I understood exactly what [the main character] meant, and that’s when I liked the book best. But this, ultimately, is the reason I know ‘The Wonder Spot’ is chick lit: because its appeal relies so much on how closely readers relate to its protagonist. Good novels allow us to feel what the characters feel, no matter how dissimilar their circumstances and ours. ‘The Wonder Spot’ contains real meaning only if we identify with Sophie enough to infuse it with meaning of our own.”

I consider this a pretty positive review, and I learned something from it: “Wonder Spot” is entertaining and interesting, and has a character women can relate to; don’t read it if you only want to read novels where you’ll learn something new.

Fair enough. I even got a free copy at the Book Expo of America on Saturday – signed – so I’m looking forward to reading it.

I wonder if Jennifer Weiner will comment on this review in her blog. She has long complained that most books about women in relationships don’t get reviewed in the Times because they are considered chick lit.

On another note, Sittenfeld’s use of the phrase “not unlike” reminded me that when I was little, they used to use that phrase in “Peanuts” cartoons a lot, and I hated it because it was confusing to me. It seemed that they should just say “like.” (Peanuts cartoons as a whole could be so dry and sarcastic that they used to annoy me on a regular basis as a young reader. Where were the punchlines, dammit?) I guess there is a nuance with “not unlike”; it’s a little less harsh than just saying “like.” Is that bad, or good? Wimpy, or more precise? I probably would have gone with “not unlike” where Curtis did…but why? Isn’t is the same thing to say it’s LIKE calling a woman a slut? Sittenfeld later says, “…the fact that the heroine was once engaged to a man who died in a car accident seems like a not insignificant detail.” I guess that’s faster than saying, “not like a detail one would leave out” which is what she was getting at more than “a significant detail.”

Well, aren’t you glad to see me write about someone else’s novels and not just my own?

Wait…that should read, “Aren’t you glad to see me write about someone else’s novels and not just my own?”