Is romantic fiction a dangerous passion?
Sometimes when I’m in town with time to kill, I pop into the nearest bookshop. It’s cheaper than a chai latte and more interesting than mindlessly refreshing Facebook. I studiously examine all the latest highbrow releases: reading the blurbs, thumbing through them, hoping fellow browsers will appreciate how erudite I am. But then my feet start to ache, my brain tires of hopping from one intricate storyline to another and I find myself edging towards towards the romantic fiction shelves. The bright covers wink at me, the chirpy titles call out and the promise of diving into a world of happy endings casts its spell.
Settling in with a romantic novel, and particularly one from my favourite sub-genre, chick lit, is like crawling into bed after an exhausting day; it’s warm and comfortable and reassures you everything will be OK. It’s likely that for a couple of hours you’ll be exposed to embarrassment and even heartbreak, but they belong to someone else; at the end lies the wonderful certainty that, despite the odds, love will win out.
Much like a whirlwind romance, reading chick lit is a delicious pleasure while it lasts but a harsh jolt back to reality when it’s over. Our own lives can only look dull in comparison. So is reading romantic fiction good for us?
I am a big fan of escapism, and I believe it is. No matter how blighted our own love lives may be, a decent romantic novel can push all our troubles aside. While we may have no idea if we’ll get back together with the-one-that-got-away, we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that for the character in the book, it will all work out. Unlike a lover, chick lit will never let you down.
Why, I often wonder about EastEnders and Coronation Street, would anyone want to watch other people’s glum lives? No one leaves an episode of those soaps with a smile on their face. But when I finish a good romantic novel I can often be found grinning from ear to ear. “There’s hope!” my brain squeals. “I too can find love just like that character and overcome all obstacles!”
It helps that the protagonists are often very easy to identify with. Like Poppy in Sophie Kinsella’s I’ve Got Your Number, I’ve been desperate to impress a boyfriend’s parents. Like Helen Fielding’s Bridget I’ve kept a journal detailing resolutions to date sensible men which inevitably fail. Like Rachel in Lindsey Kelk’s The Single Girl’s To-Do List, I’ve been dumped out of the blue. The characters’ anguish is all too familiar, so when the inevitable happy endings arrive we’ve empathised so much that we are left confident our own happiness must also be just around the corner.
Detractors would argue that there’s the rub: our expectations may start to verge on the ridiculous. Literary fiction offers its own cautionary tales, including that of Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, who gathers all sorts of bizarre illusions about love thanks to novels she has read: “Love, [Emma] felt, ought to come at once, with great thunderclaps and flashes of lightning.” When I first read Madame Bovary I realised I was on the same page as Emma; we were both blinded by romantic fiction to the point where we always expected more and were thus doomed to dissatisfaction with what the real world had to offer.
So yes, I’m well aware that chick lit won’t bring me lasting happiness, but I won’t be deterred. Maybe in 20 years I’ll have changed my tune – but for now its allure is irresistible. You know where to find me in Waterstones.