This Is Not Chick Lit
by Elizabeth Merrick, Editor
Published by Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Reviewed by Michele Heather Pollock
Subtitled: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers
In her introduction, Elizabeth Merrick writes, "Chick lit as a genre presents one very narrow representation of women's lives." While not disparaging Chick Lit as a genre (she mentions writers she likes, including Jennifer Weiner, for example), Merrick proposes that there are a lot of great women writers today that do not fit exactly into that genre, that present varying and strong alternative representations of the varying and strong experiences women face in their lives.
The stories in this book range from funny to deadly serious to touching. A publicist that decides to represent a despotic general tries to make him likeable by putting him in a knitted hat. A woman contemplates her wedding night--and runs. Another woman volunteers at a shelter for women and children, and through the experience reflects upon her own loneliness and neuroses. A couple experiences their last moments together before terrorists crash their plane into one of the Twin Towers.
This book contains everything you'd expect from Chick Lit: first dates, reflections on high school crushes, and relationships gone bad. But it is more inclusive and expansive than what is expected from the Chick Lit genre, with the thought-provoking, the touching and the downright quirky, driving the stories to places as deep and painful the lives of real women living in their thoughtful, touching and quirky real lives.
Armchair Interviews says: Fantastic read!