In the last decade, UK authors have produced a wealth of books about the world’s oldest and most favourite subject – the relationship between women and men and the search for love.

The topic has been the source of some of history’s great stories for centuries, and Shakespeare must have thought he had nailed the theme with comedies such as The Taming of the Shrew and tragedies like Romeo and Juliet. They are grand, universal works.

Yet even The Bard couldn’t have predicted how juggling a relationship with the demands of modern life would have effected how girls and boys get together and try and stay together.

Such modern strains like trying to build a career, the peer pressure of friends, colleagues and family, and other social pressures created by TV and films have affected the expectations of relationships.  

So there came a need for a contemporary fiction to tackle the complexities of what goes on between women and men in the 21st century.

The result? Two related genres known as “Chick” and “Lad” Lit (literature).

Let’s start with looking at some of the leading lights of Chick Lit.

Helen Fielding -  The Bridget Jones’s Diaries Series

The queen of the genre is Helen Fielding. Her creation, Bridget Jones, has become something of an icon of the age, and through Bridget words and phrases such as “singleton” and “smug marrieds” have entered the language.

Bridget is a single, accident-prone thirty something working for an egomaniacal male boss in an unsatisfying job in publishing. The books are written in diary form and, starting with Bridget Jones’ Diary, the reader gets intimate access to Bridget’s thoughts. The reader follows her insecurities, expectations, failures, crushes and triumphs as she frets about her job, her body image and diet, obsesses about self-help books and self-improvement while bumbling through London life with her “urban family” of friends trying to find love with Mr. Right.

The confidential style of the diary novel leaves us absorbed in Bridget’s “singleton” perspective. Much of the entertainment in the books comes from Bridget and her friends received expectations of what romance and men should be like - from classic novels such Pride and Prejudice, the advice of magazines such as Cosmopolitan and self-help books, and TV shows and films - and what modern men and romance turn out to actually be like.

Both the Diary and the follow-up, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason are high on comedy and have been made into entertaining films, and the second novel sees Bridget stressed with her new relationships and the perils of a long-term singleton who has, just maybe, found her partner.

She may get a man (or two) but that’s just the start of a new set of problems - co-habitation and fidelity, it seems at least to Bridget, are also part of modern life’s many tricky relationship issues.

But the beauty of the Bridget Jones books is the style of writing – Bridget’s life may be in a mess, but thanks to Fielding’s lighthearted comic touch, the reader is never far away from laughing with sympathy or empathy.

And when you’ve finished the books and are wondering whatever will become of Bridget as she nears the end of the minefield that being in your 30s can become, Fielding treats you to a serialisation of the updated Diaries in The Independent Online.

The Best of the Rest

The British authors labeled under “Chick Lit” and “Lad Lit” may not always like the category, but it’s a fact that such labeling helps sell the wildly popular books.

Adele Parks also writes novels about 20 and 30 something women with modern relationship dilemmas. Her candid novels such as Playing Away, the story of the seemingly happily married Connie who is tempted into having an affair, and Larger Than Life, a tale which examines the ideas of love at first sight and the consequences of requiting unrequited love, have been compared to Sex and The City for their frankness and wit.

The heroine of Sophie Kinsella’s books, Becky Bloomwood, is a successful single career woman with complex relationships, but her first and true love is shopping - and her bank manager is not at all happy about this. There are five books which follow Becky’s happily chaotic battles with her overdraft and credit cards and maturity from singleton to mother and wife, and Kinsella’s Shopaholic series has recently been made into a Hollywood film. Other popular writers include Marian Keyes, author of Last Chance Saloon, and Lisa Jewell, writer of Thirtynothing. Chick Lit: Not Exactly Shakespeare… The Chick Lit books do not have the power, universality, or timelessness of Shakespeare’s or Bronte’s work, of course. Yet that’s the point. One theme of all of these books is how modern life’s trivialities and superficialities get in the way of and confuse relationships. And also, in some cases, of how they make relationships more fun. Everyone messes up in relationships, and one of the joys of reading these books is recognizing the behaviour of someone you know in the tales.

As many readers have testified, it’s even funnier when you recognize yourself in a Bridget Jones or a Becky Bloomwood, and it’s a comfort to know that you’re not alone in making a fool of yourself sometimes.

And if you do not recognize yourself in these tales, then you’re lucky in a way – you may soon have enough real-life material for your own Chick Lit saga.

Author: Tony Wildman