During the last years, women's literature It has evolved beyond the romantic stories of Jasmine or undisputed classics like Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre. Now, women write, are protagonists and even immerse themselves in dark and twisted plots. Derived from gender chick lit (or literature for girls), the grip lit has established itself as the latest literary trend on both sides of the Atlantic. And you will ask yourself: What exactly is chick lit literature?
Women. Literature. 2016.
By the early 2000s, the situation for women in the West had changed enough to allow for a new wave of feminist titles championed by books like Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (and which would be inspired by the famous series starring Sarah Jessica Parker) or The Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding. A literature written by and for single women between the ages of 20 and 40 destined to confirm the role of modern women in a new era. However, it was necessary to go further.
Chick lit literature was not stagnant, in fact it dared to talk about women seduced by sadomaso in the saga of 50 Sombras de Gray, the cornerstone of erotic lyrics not without a certain suspense and even blood (although not for obvious reasons). A phenomenon that, in parallel, began to encompass various titles in which the protagonist was also subjected to dark plots more related to psychological thriller or suspense, as was the case with the best-seller Lost by Gillian Flynn, also adapted for film by David Fincher.
A title whose success would link with that of The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins, converted in early 2015 into one of best-selling books in Amazon history in record time. In this novel, the protagonist was an ex-alcoholic, a voyeur and goes to the psychiatrist; it is about analyzing all the vertices of the XNUMXst century woman, twisting them and serving them in a book that you can devour in three sittings.
The success of these stories has given rise to a more specific genre called griplit, defined by Irish writer Marian Keyes as an abbreviation for gripping psychological thrillers literature or, what is the same, suspense literature by and for women.
These last few months have been the culmination of this trend, with 29% of fiction readers in the United States hooked on the genre and more than 25 million copies billed in 2015, data that confirm a new wave of female stories that transcends Grey's eroticism and allows us to explore even darker and more diverse universes.
With such a display of women's literature, there are already those who suggest a movement boy lit as a counterattack, forming a literary war of the sexes that we will unravel little by little.
Have you also been hooked on grip lit fever?
Beware of confusing feminine with feminist! Except for that, congratulations, I liked this article.
Hello AR. Yes, in the article both feminist and feminine allude to different contexts, even if they are intertwined concepts. I'm glad you liked it. All the best.
It seems to me paradoxical that a literature that calls itself feminist, which by definition and with all the reason in the world advocates equality between the sexes, ends up making a differentiation as frivolous and sexist as this one. There will be those who see it as a search for identity. For me it is a schoolyard. Boys playing soccer and girls cooking kitchens and babysitting. This can only be a trick to sell more. Label disgust.
It is not a new genre, it belongs to the same genre of thriller, why is it new, where does it come from? It must be for marketing and it must not be confused with the Chick lit that emerged to give a different image to women, When Chick lit emerged at that time, female characters were very secondary and in many cases served to highlight the male protagonist, but Grip lit is a different thing because all they do is take thriller books written by women and catalog them with what "They are books for women." If they wanted to contribute to making the authors visible FOR EVERYONE, this does exactly the opposite, the only thing that causes it is that the literature is labeled again and the authors stay in a corridor destined to a market audience and have the thought that "if a woman writes a book, obviously, it is only for women."