In defence of chick lit

But my riled roomie didn’t stop there. ‘How can you read that chick lit shit? You’re too smart for that.’

It may sound like a stance solely held by snobby pseudo-critics, but chick lit has long been looked down upon. It’s viewed as the bottom of the literary hierarchy; pejorative shorthand for romantic books seen as flimsy, shallow and young. When the whole world fell for Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the journalist Jeremy Bowen dismissed it with: ‘Sounds like chick lit to me.’ Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty has called on the publishing industry to ban the term ‘chick lit’, confessing to a ‘sense of shame’ when her book was branded as such. And when my friend recommended my debut novel, Almost Adults, to her sister last week, the WhatsApp reply read: ‘I think I’m a bit too old for chick lit.’ She’s 22.

But without the chick lit I’ve read my whole life, I probably wouldn’t be the person I am, and I almost definitely wouldn’t be a writer. I trudged through A Tale of Two Cities at school, only to rush home and read If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern under the covers. Through university and internships, Marian Keyes’s books were masterclasses in skilfully marrying humour with heartbreak. I’ve gleefully preordered every Lindsey Kelk, Lucy Vine and Laura Jane Williams book. Last year, during one of the most desperate and desolate times of my life, I clung to the pages of Where The Light Gets In by Lucy Dillon, and later, The Day We Met by Roxie Cooper. Their words reminded me that I wasn’t alone.

And I’m not the only one championing chick lit as a vital component of the literary landscape. It was the acute observations about love and relationships, and the whip-smart, careful character arcs of Normal People’s Marianne and Connell that won Rooney the 2018 Costa Novel Award, bagged her a No 1 spot on The Sunday Times bestsellers list and got her longlisted for the Booker Prize. It was the captivating storyline crafted by Moriarty that saw Nicole Kidman buy the rights and turn Big Little Lies into a blockbuster, four-time Golden Globe-winning TV series. It was the relatability and vivid, strong female leads of chick lit juggernaut Sophie Kinsella’s work — Becky Bloomwood, anyone? — that have seen her sell around 47 million books in more than 60 countries.

While they may not be social criticism set during the French Revolution, they are books that can change your life, which does beg the question: why is chick lit so regularly and readily denounced? It must be because, surely, these are books written about women, by women, for women. Contemporary works of fiction by men about men are not similarly labelled or neatly packaged as a sub-genre. They are not ‘dick lit’. They are just ‘books’.

‘Almost Adults’ by Ali Pantony is out now