Chick Lit Special

Available for over a year

Today on Open Book we look at Chick lit, books for and mainly by women. To some it's a derisory term that pigeonholes talented writers, to others it' s a throwaway description of a frothy genre that is to the nineties and noughties what Jackie Collins was to the Eighties. When was chick-lit born? Has it died and why is it so maligned? One things for sure, it certainly wasn't born in a wine bar with Bridget Jones if what a certain G Eliot had to say in 1856 is anything to go by! This Week Angels by Marian Keyes (Penguin) Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married by Marion Keyes (Mandarin) Dinner For Two by Mike Gale (Flame) The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980 by Elaine Showalter (Virago Press) A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing by Elaine Showalter (Virago Press) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (Picador) The Fat Woman's Joke by Fay Weldon (Flamingo) y Fat Brother by Jim Keeble (Penguin Books) The Odd Women by George Gissing (Oxford World's Classics)