NYR iOS app Android app More  Pauline Millard  Pauline Millard
Posted: February 11, 2010 05:41 PM  The New Cliches in Chick Lit
What's Your Reaction:  When Bridget Jones' Diary became a hit in
the mid-1990s, it spawned the lucrative chick lit cottage
industry. True, romance novels always existed, and Jackie
Collins had a corner on the trashy beach-read. But chick lit,
with its urban career gals as protagonists, was a modern
alternative to the bodice-ripping dime store selections and
heavy literary fiction that often got lost in its own depth.
Soon, though, chick lit became a parody of itself, with its
pastel colored covers that almost always included a martini
and/or a woman wearing stilettos. Plots often involved a
disgruntled assistant working in New York media (usually a
thinly veiled magazine) and there was usually a gay sidekick and
a wacky friend. A crushing break up occurred in the early
chapters and our fearless female had to spend the remaining
pages rebuilding her life with the aforementioned mot