Books with the title in cursive writing on the front cover scream CHICK LIT, a genre I studiously avoid. The off putting thing about chick lit is that you know what’s going to happen in chick lit before you go to the trouble of reading it. The main character will start off somehow not fully engaged in life and then something or some things will happen that make them learn a lot about themselves and connect in a new and meaningful ways with those around them, and then they’ll discover a new love of life and in the end everything will turn out ok. Bah! Eleanor Oliphant is chick lit clever enough to fool people into thinking it’s something more profound than chick lit, but in the end, it’s just chick lit. Read these books instead: First Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Great Alone by Kirsten Hannah, The Geography of Friendship by Sally Piper and The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens. Because we chicks deserve better, braver lit than Eleanor Oliphant.
