The smug, sexist classism of both Dowd and “her friend” at the New Republic make me cringe.

While I’m willing to agree that Dowd had a point, I’m not so sure about the cogent. I think she danced up to the edge of an argument we’d both love to have (or would it be debate, or is it a debate if we’re both on the same side), then she chose preciousness over substance. She missed the opportunity to discuss the fact that it’s so hard for women’s stories to make an impact on the market…which, in my more feminist moments, is a result of the focus on “guy” fiction. But you know me, always whining.

I would argue that there is quite a bit beyond the single girl in cities books. Marian Keyes (who, you know, makes me go all fangirl). You can be smart and funny and very much about the modern world. Keyes often explores dysfunctional families in a loving context. She also explores issues like addiction in ways that make you cringe. In a good way. There are others, though the ones that come to mind on a mainstream scale are British. Which says more about American publishers than it does American writers.

However, if you’re looking for a great book about women’s lives, I totally recommend Valerie Trueblood’s Seven Loves. It’s a novel-in-stories about the various loves in one woman’s life. Beautiful. Oh my, it was great to read. I also loved Elizabeth Poliner’s Mutual Life & Casualty. Both are, to a degree, exploring women from another era (especially the 70’s), but both are also, I’d argue, a sort of chicklit, if you’re willing to accept that the genre looks at the life experience of women.

The Dowd piece was a bit baffling for its lack of relevancy. Her outrage would have seemed more timely two or three years ago, when bookstores were overflowing with pink covered books. Now, this seems more beating a dead horse than topical.

That said, she makes some cogent, if shallow, broad-stroked points about chicklit. Even counting myself as a devoted fan of single girls in the city books, when I see plot after plot, with seemingly little change from author to author, I wonder what other stories about women’s lives there are to tell. And, more importantly, why there doesn’t seem to be room for them on bookstore shelves.