This Is Not Chick Lit
Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers* *(No heels required)
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Chick lit: A genre of fiction that often recycles the following plot: Girl in big city desperately searches for Mr. Right in between dieting and shopping for shoes. Girl gets dumped (sometimes repeatedly). Girl finds Prince Charming.
This Is Not Chick Lit is a celebration of America’s most dynamic literary voices, as well as a much needed reminder that, for every stock protagonist with a designer handbag and three boyfriends, there is a woman writer pushing the envelope of literary fiction with imagination, humor, and depth.
The original short stories in this collection touch on some of the same themes as chick lit–the search for love and identity–but they do so with extraordinary power, creativity, and range; they are also political, provocative, and, at turns, utterly surprising. Featuring marquee names as well as burgeoning talents, This Is Not Chick Lit will nourish your heart, and your mind.
Including these original stories:
“The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Two Days” by Aimee Bender
“An Open Letter to Doctor X” by Francine Prose
“Gabe” by Holiday Reinhorn
“Documents of Passion Love” by Carolyn Ferrell
“Volunteers Are Shining Stars” by Curtis Sittenfeld
“Selling the General” by Jennifer Egan
“The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge” by Dika Lam
“Love Machine” by Samantha Hunt
“Ava Bean” by Jennifer S. Davis
“Embrace” by Roxana Robinson
“The Epiphany Branch” by Mary Gordon
“Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans” by Judy Budnitz
“Gabriella, My Heart” by Cristina Henríquez
“The Red Coat” by Caitlin Macy
“The Matthew Effect” by Binnie Kirshenbaum
“The Recipe” by Lynne Tillman
“Meaning of Ends” by Martha Witt
Praise for This Is Not Chick Lit
“This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing.”—Gloria Steinem
“These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed.”—Elle
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Chick lit as a genre," writes Merrick in her introduction, "presents one very narrow representation of women's lives." This anthology's 18 stories, on the other hand, present a frequently funny take on women's experiences ranging from the mundane to the riotously absurd. In the first story, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "The Thing Around Your Neck," a young Nigerian immigrant struggles to find her place in America. In Curtis Sittenfeld's "Volunteers Are Shining Stars," a mildly neurotic young volunteer, maddeningly pecked at by her colleagues, is driven to violence. One of the most memorable stories, Jennifer Egan's "Selling the General," puts a disgraced publicist to work for a genocidal dictator to pay for her daughter's private school tuition. Men get some representation too: Cristina Henr quez's "Gabriella My Heart" sees a gay man reflecting on a heterosexual high school crush, while the married biology professor in Binnie Kirshenbaum's "The Matthew Effect" pursues a student. Readers who've been Fendi'd and Choo'd to distraction would do well to pick this up.
