This woman has a point.
I'm reading Anita Shreve for the first time, and it most certainly is not The Devil Wears Prada. Unless the page of purposely awkward trying on of hiking boots for an ultimately lethal climb up Mount Kenya with some British Ex-Colonists, counts as Shoe Porn.
It doesn't.
No, the plot is great. The characters obviously fleshed out. The relationships complex. The women are photographers -- creators! not the objets d-art. Awesome. So, not Chick Lit. I'll give you.
However. These things that are great are all told to the reader. I am an intelligent person, and a damned discerning reader. Personally, I'm almost insulted when I find out the plot is great, characters fleshy, relationships complex, when the exposition spends 60 pages telling me so in no uncertain terms.
The difference, Ma'am, between Chick Lit and seriously taken NYT revered contemporary literary fiction is the reader is allowed to make up their own minds about these things. And if, like Franzen, you are good at it, your reader will come to the conclusions intended.
Women do it too. Don't worry.
Zadie Smith, White Teeth -- Go!
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale
Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
Alice Munro
Mary Gaitskill
Ursula Leguin
Isabella Allende
Maybe you just want a separate type of Easy To Read/By Women type of fiction? Somewhere for Anita Shreve/Jodi Picoult? Nicholas Sparks might want to me on your list...
Why do we have to keep arguing about stuff like this? Can't we just get along?
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