WHEN I WAS growing up, reading was a big deal in our house.
I remember excitedly visiting the mobile library that would trundle in to our estate and spending what felt like hours perusing the shelves. I’d beg my mam to bring me to the newly opened Tallaght Library in the mid ’90s, and marvel at all that was on offer.
And while I was delighted to read the books for my age group, it was always the paperbacks my mother borrowed that I was really interested in. The ones with flashy covers, punny titles and women’s names in huge, colourful letters.
I had to be content with sneaking glimpses at those books until, having graduated from Judy Blume and Sweet Valley High, I was deemed old enough to read my very first Marian Keyes. It was Watermelon, and it was love at first line.
Here was a book about an Irish woman, her mad, funny family, feckless husband, career, problems and friendships. It was funny, it was irreverent and it felt very true to life. I was an instant superfan.
Now I’m 38, able to read whatever I like and still find myself reaching for the same type of fiction. Something that won’t set out to depress me, frighten me or confuse me on purpose in the name of style.
So when it came to writing my own debut novel, Reality Check, published today, I was pretty sure I knew what would come out – or at least, what I hoped would. I wanted to write something relatable, funny and escapist but with depth and feeling, something that dealt with serious topics without being very serious overall.
Thankfully, I’m delighted with the result. It tells the tale of an Irish-American brood helmed by the matriarch Desdemona Daniels. She’s a reality TV star in LA, a mogul and a momager, but when her adult daughters are going through simultaneous crises, she finds she can’t just wave a magic wand and make their problems disappear. It’s an exploration of fame and family, of relationships and facing up to their flaws.
It’s a book that likely would have been dubbed “chick lit” in years gone by, dismissed as fluffy and light (even though it’s not, actually).
But “chick lit” is just a catch-all term for an incredibly successful sector of the industry, which is essentially books by women largely for women.
Not in an exclusionary “not for any men” way. Less like misandry, more like “this is my experience of the world as a woman, can you relate?” And the answer is often a resounding yes.
I remember being in an English Literature seminar on Jane Austen when pursuing my degree. I had chosen the course because of my deep love of books, but soon learned that reading for pleasure wasn’t exactly the point of academia. I was stunned to find out that even Austen was dismissed by some as the “chick lit” of the Regency era.
Writing about love, about families, wasn’t serious stuff according to some of my classmates, many of whom felt their degree wouldn’t be worth the parchment on which it was printed if they hadn’t slogged through Ulysses. Luckily, I always had my favourites to fall back on in my spare time.
Thus it was inevitable that I was going to be inspired by my own heroes – Marian, Maeve Binchy, Patricia Scanlan, Helen Fielding, Jackie Collins. These women aren’t what you’d call titans of serious literature, they haven’t been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. But they are each titans of writing about women, about the female experience. They are all wildly commercially successful to blockbuster status, with adaptations and legions of die-hard fans.
This doesn’t make them unworthy or unserious; on the contrary, what’s more serious than real life?
Each of their books has the ability to transport their readers, to make them feel deeply and to make them feel seen. The authors are unique, but what they have in common is that they are wonderful storytellers, each tempering the experience of reality through a prism of escapism and glamour.
They talk about relationships of all kinds, of naturalistic dynamics we can all recognise. Their heroines are journalists, entrepreneurs, chefs, writers, therapists, actors, singers. They’re mothers, daughters, wives, friends, sisters. They’re also victims of domestic violence, alcoholics, drug addicts, adulterers. They’re depressed, bereft, sick, lovelorn, anxious. They reflect every angle of the human experience.
I’m glad to be writing in 2024, when social media has democratised reading now that everyone has a say in what’s deemed good. There’s more choice than ever and there’s something for everyone – romantasy is the genre of now the way erotica was previously, crime is consistently topping the charts and the enemies to lovers canon is booming.
All of those could be dismissed as “chick lit” , I suppose – if you’re someone who likes to minimise things that skew more feminine, that is.
Vicki Notaro is an author, journalist and former magazine editor based in Dublin. Her first novel Reality Check is published today by Penguin Sandycove, and available in all good bookstores and online.
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