Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction [Paperback]

Suzanne Ferriss (Author), Mallory Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0415975034 | ISBN-13: 978-0415975032 | Edition: New edition

From the bestselling Bridget Jones's Diary that started the trend to the television sensation Sex and the City that captured it on screen, "chick lit" has become a major pop culture phenomenon. Banking on female audiences' identification with single, urban characters who struggle with the same life challenges, publishers have earned millions and even created separate imprints dedicated to the genre. Not surprisingly, some highbrow critics have dismissed chick lit as trashy fiction, but fans have argued that it is as empowering as it is entertaining.

This is the first volume of its kind to examine the chick lit phenomenon from a variety of angles, accounting for both its popularity and the intense reactions-positive and negative-it has provoked. The contributors explore the characteristics that cause readers to attach the moniker "chick" to a particular book and what, if anything, distinguishes the category of chick lit from the works of Jane Austen on one end and Harlequin romance novels on the other. They critique the genre from a range of critical perspectives, considering its conflicted relationship with feminism and postfeminism, heterosexual romance, body image, and consumerism. The fourteen original essays gathered here also explore such trends and subgenres as "Sistah Lit," "Mommy Lit," and "Chick Lit Jr.," as well as regional variations.

As the first book to consider the genre seriously, Chick Lit offers real insight into a new generation of women's fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this pioneering book female critics take a serious look at what the genre has begotten thus far and consider its place in literary history, which has long cast a dubious eye on books written by women solely to please themselves and other women." -- Tania Modleski, author of Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women

"Valuable addition to the field, not only of gender and popular culture but of feminism in general." --College Literature

About the Author

Suzanne Ferriss is Professor of English at Nova Southeastern University. She is co-author of A Handbook of Literary Feminisms and co-editor of two volumes on the cultural study of fashion: On Fashion and Footnotes: On Shoes.

Mallory Young is Professor of English and French at Tarleton State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; New edition edition (October 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415975034
• ISBN-13: 978-0415975032
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,021,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is not as dry as my review!, January 13, 2006

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Eloi (Ely, NV USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction (Paperback)

As one who had never heard the term Chick Lit before reading reviews of Emily Barr's "Backpack," I gotta thank Ferriss, Young, and their 14 contributors for 'splaining it to me. Some of the essays, like those by Mazza and Guerrero, make critical points with style and wit worth reading for themselves. But even the essay that reads like a dissertation chapter and the structuralist analysis help define Chick Lit and relate it not just to classics by Burney and Austen but also to chronologically closer predecessors by Atwood, Bombeck, Jong, Acker and others.

I admired the rather sour take on the genre by Wells, who backs up her criticism with comparisons of the craft of foremothers Austen, Bronte and Wharton with Fielding, Weisberger and Kinsella. Not that I agree with her, but it is refreshing to have an articulate naysayer in the collection of essays.

Most of the essayists use comparison well, but Kiernan's "No Satisfaction: Sex and the City, Run Catch Kiss, and the Conflict of Desires in Chick Lit's New Heroines" shows very clearly why Sohn's novel is a more disturbing read.

The index is excellent. It's easy to see that authors Fielding and Austen get the most refs, but what really help are the subheadings under the term "chick lit." Since Amazon doesn't have LOOK INSIDE for this edition at present, here are some of the subheadings: "female friendships and," "genre's formula, discussion of," "confessional narrative (instant messaging) style,"--very useful!

So does the publication of a scholarly but lively collection of essays mark the end of this genre (yeah, what ever happened to cyberpunk?)? I doubt it. Ferriss and Young's book convinced me that there has been a sea-change in contemporary fiction and provided a ton of new titles to read.