Is ‘Chick Lit’ Dead?

Chick Lit is dead.

Everyone says so.  Publishers say so.  Editors say so.

And yet… romantic comedy films like “Failure to Launch” and “No Strings Attached” do good business at the box office.  “Midnight in Paris” won an Oscar, for crying out loud.  That tells me that a lot of people – men as well as women – like romantic comedies.  Including Woody Allen.

So why don’t readers want to read romantic comedy?  That’s what chick lit is, after all.

Perhaps it’s the unfortunate term, ‘chick lit.’  After the huge success of “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” the publishing market was flooded with imitators, some good, some okay, many pretty awful.  Just slap a cartoonish woman in a short skirt and high heels on the cover, publishers reasoned, put a few shopping bags in her perfectly manicured hands, and sell millions of copies!

And it worked, for a while.  Voracious readers couldn’t get enough of Bridget and her ilk… until everyone got tired of derivative, poorly-written imitations, and quit buying those books.

So publishers have swung to the opposite extreme, and assume that no one wants to read romantic, female-centric comedy, ever again.  Instead, we have books like “One Day,” which on the surface reads like a romantic novel, but isn’t.

It’s the anti-Christ of romantic novels.

Instead of the anticipated happy ending (SPOILER ALERT HERE), the  heroine, Emma, gets killed by a bus while riding her bicycle – after she and the male lead, Dex, finally find happiness together after years of missed connections.

Emma gets run over by a bus.  Really?  Why not make it even better, and throw in a few space aliens and some exploding meteorites for good measure?

When I finished reading “One Day,” I was so furious I literally threw the book across the room.  I felt duped.  I invested an entire book’s worth of time in these two characters, characters I liked and cared about, only to have the rug pulled out from under me on the last page.  It felt like a cheap shot, the equivalent of the “it was all a dream” sequence thrown in at the finale to Dallas.

If I want existentialism, I’ll read Kafka.

I suppose to be deemed literary, or to be taken seriously, a book can’t possibly have a happy ending.  Quelle horreur!  I mean, who wants to read about a woman making her way in the world, navigating a tricky relationship or a challenging career or a cheating spouse… and finding happiness in the process?  Who wants to read that?

I do.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I don’t want to read about teenaged vampires or distant heaven-worlds or three-headed aliens.  I outgrew the vampire thing in my twenties, when I read every book Anne Rice wrote.  Even so, I totally support those readers who do like fantasy, sci-fi, or paranormal genres.  At least they have plenty of books in those genres to chose from, because publishers continue to publish those books – which is more than I can say for the (apparently) dead-in-the-water chick lit genre.

I think the term, ‘chick lit,’ should be laid to rest.  Bury it deep, please, and may it rest in peace.

But as for funny, well-written, female-centric romantic comedies?  Sorry, but like vampires, they’ll never die.

 

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