So what comes after chick lit? Apparently, the next step is Babysick Lit, in which women will go to any lengths to have a baby.
As one reviewer has reported, 'baby-sick lit' has taken over from chick lit as 'publishing's latest craze'. Polly Williams' previous novel, The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy, delved into the turmoil of new motherhood and its corresponding loss of a sex life/decent wardrobe/sense of identity. It's all quite sharp and entertaining, with some funny insights about the weirdness of postnatal groups and the disorientation facing the onetime girl-in-PR when forced to adapt to a life of tracksuits and buggy-pushing. Like Fiona Neill's Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy, which projects the struggle with maternal identity further forward into life with school-age children, Williams' brand of baby-sick lit abounds with the contradictory impulse to love one's child and escape from it; suspicions of one's partner having an affair and temptations to have an affair oneself; and a rather peculiar obsession with personal grooming.
To the extent that it connects with a new generation of career-girls-turned-mummies, to whom babies are alien creatures and coffee mornings foreign lands, baby-sick lit has its place, just as Chick Lit does in the life of the busy commuter girl. (As Chick Lit author Jenny Colgan once famously remarked: 'We do actually know the difference between literature and popular fiction. We know the difference between foie gras and Hula Hoops, but, you know, sometimes we just want Hula Hoops. But when it comes to what we might call piss-stick lit, in honour of the ubiquitous home urine tests for ovulation and pregnancy, things become rather more uncomfortable.
So what comes after Babysick Lit? Divorce Lit? Custody-Battle Lit? Caring For
Aging Parents Lit? Nursing Home Lit? Where does it all end?
