Thanks Luisa. I will read it. And report back.

Well, borrow it from the library. Our last experiment with trying to make people 'give Chick Lit a chance' ended in disaster with the person in question annoyed that he'd wasted his money! It's not to everyone's taste, and no-one will be offended if you hate it!

I'm not fond of pink myself, but there you go. As for being called a chick-lit author, I don't mind at all but I never feel I fit into the category very snugly.

So I guess Austen is chick lit, then

.

I'm sure I saw something on the tv about how they're going to "repackage" Austin, the Brontes etc in pink covers. Was it a branch of Headline? Or am I wrong about that?

Wikepedia says:

The genre
Chick lit features hip, stylish female protagonists, usually in their twenties and thirties, in urban settings (usually London or Manhattan), and follows their love lives and struggles in business (often in the publishing, advertising, public relations or fashion industry). The books usually feature an airy, irreverent tone and frank sexual themes.

which is quite a narrow definition.

Very narrow!!

Sorry. I haven't meant to tread on toes by saying chick lit - as I saw it, without having read any of it - was not to my taste and incomparable to Jane Austen.

It's true that they have repackaged Austen in pink, yes. I have no objection to this, and am all for anything that gets people reading, particularly top-quality Jane Austen.

However, I absolutely do not get the pink thing.

I'm also not sure I will get the chick lit thing, but I'll give it a go, and not just because Margaret Atwood says I should.

I must admit, I've never understood this "pink for girls, blue for boys" thing. I've no idea what's supposed to be feminine about pink or masculine about blue. What about yellow, orange, white, vermillion, etc.?

Alex

Actually I like pink a lot and IMO it's a very flattering colour on most people (even men - lots of French men wear it)

Luisa recommended Rachel's Holiday which I read years ago but I remember enjoying it a lot. It does have a slight autobiographical slant in that Marian Keyes is a reformed alcoholic and has been through rehab.

I just wanted to add that I hope I haven't offended any chick-lit writers or readers. There is a tendancy to imply that chick-lit books are badly written and 'thrown together' with both eyes fixed on sales rather than on the message and that, I absolutely do not agree with. They they may look like free-flowing chat but I think that must be deceptively hard to achieve and as much thought and crafting goes into them as other types of fiction.

However, Luisa mentioned that chick-lit deals with 'real' women with flaws but that doesn't really define it because all good fiction deals with 'real' people. Earlier I wasn't objecting to the presence of flaws, just the presentation of them as adorable quirkiness when the same traits in a man would be seen very negatively.

As Nathaniel Hawthorne once said...
"Easy reading makes for damn hard writing"
I think that could be referred to chick-lit.

I think

all

writing is damn hard. Good writing just gives the appearance of being effortless.

<Added>

Obviously, that was meant to be italics

Well, I've read Kate's TBMH, Austen's Pride & Prejudice (among others) and Marian Keye's Rachel's Holiday and I have enjoyed each one of those in much the same way, ie, cannot put the damn thing down - and yet all 3 have very different styles.

I really don't care much for labels - what I'm personally looking for is a bloody good read.

Cheers
Sharon
x

That's reassuring, Sharon - thanks!

Yes I'm wondering if rather than this that or the other being chicklit (I think it ISN'T right to call Austen chicklit - the term didn't exist then and it is alienating to male readers many of whom enjoyed her books at her time anyway) that it is merely that the SUCCESS of chicklit means everything is being marketed that way now to take advantage of the fact there is this large group of woman readers, whether it is really what is usually called chicklit or just books dealing with women's themes. So I suppose to have a pink cover maybe taps into that. But I still object to the pink covers. I hate everything being so girlified!

Maybe Kate's book would be seen as chicklit, maybe my book would be seen as chicklit. But, to be honest, whether the books in the genre are great or not, I put my head on the block and say I don't like the term. I do think it sounds pejorative and narrow. It also sounds like it is only for women and I think books with female leads should only have to be read only by women. Even if they are - the pink covers don't give them much of a chance do they? Its not that I think everything has to be read by men either, but why all this very strict division now, so that people rarely step outside the zone in terms of what they experience?

I have said before that there does seem to be a snobbish view of the genre that I don't like or agree with at all. But on the other hand, I don't see why a book with a female MC and humour must be seen in the light of the genre (which is relatively new) and marketed as such with a pink cover when the author doesn't even relate to this approach. It also makes it harder for people to notice any subversiveness.

Hope that makes sense and doesn't offend anyone.

I think books with female leads should only have to be read only by women.

I think books with female leads should NOT only be read by women

So do I, very much so, but the statistics show broadly that men tend to read novels by men, whereas women read novels by men or women, they don't mind. So this immediately complicates matters for a female writer: do the publishers hide the author's gender, issue the novel under a pen name, or using only her initials? Or do they hold up their hands and say, Might as well go all out for the female market because no bloke's going to touch this?