ABSTRACT
A distinctive feature of chick lit repeatedly underlined by chick-lit fans is the fact that the novels create relatable storylines, and heroines with whom readers can identify. The novels speak to them in a voice which is confiding, chatty, and casual - briefly, a voice which resembles that of a friend. Lisa Guerrero argues that the capacity of the writing to make the readers feel involved, appreciated, and trusted, is what constitutes the success of chick lit, and its related genre, so-called “sistah lit”:
The appeal, and the power, of these genres was, and is, the remarkable ability to make the reading experience nearly indistinguishable from a conversation with our best girlfriends. It isn’t fiction to much as it is the comfort of community. (91)
This ability of literature to imitate the language of everyday conversation, to present familiar voices, and to create the impression that the characters in the book become the readers’ fictional friends is cherished by chick-lit readers. In literary circles, however, this idea of wanting to relate to, or even befriend fictional characters recently incited outrage. When literary fiction author Claire Messud was asked in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly whether she would like to be friends with the female protagonist of her latest novel The Woman Upstairs (2013), Messud was rather dismayed. The question emerged because her interviewer found that Nora Eldrige, Messud’s protagonist, had an “almost unbearably grim” outlook on life (n.pag.). Messud retorted:
For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections?
