Chick Lit

I know it is a huge money-maker for publishers and movie companies alike but so-called chick lit irritates me. Shopaholic? Get over yourself. Bridget? Too hapless by half. I swear we women do ourselves no service by having these heroes in our lives.

So imagine my acute surprise to discover myself addicted to books by Marian Keyes. These are uber-chick lit and I cannot put them down. I hope Marian is in some garret in Ireland somewhere typing her fingers to bloody stumps because I am very nearly finished the entire oeuvre.

These books should have nothing going for them according to me, with my current and perpetual prejudices -- they take place in the UK, there are many cute Britsy phrases ("dashing over the road to the shops" when you mean crossing a major artery to go to a store); there are references to places and "shops" that are strictly off-limits as all of the above are reminders of he who must not be remembered. Worst of all, love always turns out just fine in these books, and this is super-verboten.

Still, Keyes' books are charming and funny, lighthearted in fact, which is exactly what we need in heavy February, when the sun has gone missing for what is now months at a stretch. The characters are not so much hapless and quirky as they are completely mad, or vile but in a funny way. In Anybody Out There? a sister consoles her very recently and heartbreakingly widowed sibling by saying "lucky you he didn't run off with some other woman or I'd have to kill him" or words to that effect; this is comfortingly familiar in that it is precisely the kind of consolation my mother would give me, she being of the "it could always be worse" school of sympathy (sic).

Keyes' stories are set in big cities rife with amusing and attractive men -- this is where they veer into full-on fairy tale but not without precedent. She is not so far from Jane Austen -- I know there are lots of nuances in Austen, I'm not denying that, but it is kind of frustrating that no matter how desolate the village or impoverished the girl there is always a dashing man "just over the road" to save her from a life of squalor. I live in a city of millions and I can assure you there is no dashing man anywhere in sight.

Rules are made to be broken, and the rule against chick lit is hereby bent. Do try the Keyes backlist. These books add a ray of sunshine to a foggy day.