Forget about pretending to wade through pretentious literary smut from the old boy’s club, boring tomes by Henry Miller and Norman Mailer. Boys will be boys, and we aren’t boys. Chick lit is booming, and signs and banners loudly and proudly summon the pink brigade to overflowing tables and shelves.
I confess I resisted the lady-lite trend in reading for years…while the name never offended me as it did some, I boldly declared that ‘chick lit’ was everything in the world a girl might read, from Shakespeare to the giantesses like Isabel Allende and Margaret Atwood. I’ve just never had a thing for what they used to call the ‘sex and shopping’ stories.
But that was before we all got caught reading Bridget Jones’ Diary, an infectious romp through feminine insecurity that reminded me of my childhood favourite, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged Thirteen and Three Quarters. While neither books would change the world, both showcased the self-conscious human spirit with a bit of verve and a million truly funny and totally familiar moments. Easy to digest, to be sure, but genuinely funny. Still, I was a bit of an art snob when the Shopaholic craze began. I worked in the bookstore, and we barely sold any other titles. But my roommate then was The Professor, an Egyptian radical who spoke six languages and boasted nearly as many university degrees. He was teaching and researching theology, and he wanted to talk about Coptic Christianity or the modernization of Jewish art. I would have been embarrassed to drop brand names, so I read Karen Armstrong’s sweeping and brilliant religious histories, for which I am not sorry.
Still, I had a secret penchant for Lucky: the Magazine About Shopping- and I still do. Who wouldn’t wile away the hours, circling their favourite objects, reading small blurbs about what eye shadows would make blue peepers pop this spring? My paparazzi would seldom find me in a mall- I’m a Goodwill girl at heart (well, now that I’m thirtysomething, it’s a mix of Goodwill and Winners!) But the Sophie Kinsella series, Confessions of a Shopaholic, did worm its way eventually into my curious hands. Like everyone else on the planet, I was immediately hooked. The formula was pure pop, and a winning one. Going shopping with Rebecca Bloomwood was far more fun than real-life shopping. I didn’t run into any crowds, I didn’t have to look at my sausage thighs in badly lit mirrors; I didn’t have to choose wisely. Even better, the appealing heroine never ran out of damn good one-liners, was clever and funny, and always getting into ridiculous escapades. And what girl doesn’t love an escapade? 
It had been awhile since I’d devoured any escapadist fiction- and after a stretch of acceptably pompous prize winners and a whole heap of nonfiction as per usual, I picked up Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon. Unlike Entertainment Weekly, I would hardly declare this a ‘gritty look at the madness of never knowing exactly what you want.’ I doubt that in six months I’ll recall even having read it. But no matter: not every book must shatter the earth, and this indulgent and often funny story looks at what to do after your dreams land in your lap and you don’t want it anymore.
Every girl can relate to the splintering revelation of her man’s humanity- yes, boys, first you are gods, exactly where you want to be. If you want to stay that way in our eyes, it’s pretty simple: don’t lie and cheat, don’t patronize, and don’t leave your mess all over our apartment. These things erode the mystery far too quickly, and then you complain that we no longer want sex. For me that math is easy- the fewer six-month socks I find on my floor, and the fewer farts and belches I hear, the friskier you will find me. Men don’t always see what their other girlfriends or drinking out of the milk carton have to do with sex, but if they’d like more of it, it would be wise to catch on soon.
That said, even though Matthew is a serial cheater who tends to tomcat during a wife’s pregnancy, there are moments I genuinely feel sorry for him. Women’s oceanic moods are not always predictable, and no matter how hot your secretary is, moving in with her may not be the dreamy steamy lifestyle you were anticipating. Even the hottest, curviest, horniest babes in the world get periods and babies, and though men can handle the carcasses of war, they have a hard time with a tampon or a stretch mark. So while Matthew indeed deserves everything that his wife and his girlfriend have coming to him, at times I can’t help cringing in embarrassment for the poor aging sod. Still, he made his bed; he’ll have to lie in it.
But Getting Rid of Matthew is not really about man-hating. It’s about the inherent comedy in our gender foibles. Helen is nearly forty, and has been Matthew’s other woman for four years. Living in a tiny basement in London, working as a secretary, and being childless, with nothing but another woman’s man to show for her life, she understandably feels she has achieved none of the status or accomplishment a woman is supposed to have by now. But in the end, she sees how amazing her life is after all. There is much to be said for coming home to your own flat, pouring a few glasses of wine all by your lonesome, and doing whatever the hell you want. Such freedom has indeed been rare for women throughout history.
And so, although the book itself was rather mediocre, I closed it with a brand new relish for the life I’ve made in my humble abode- my cats, my books, and me. Now this is living.
Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon, Harper Collins, New York, 2007
Visit Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.
Her book, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos, is available through Indigo or Amazon. Check it out.
