How Hard Can It Be?

Allison Pearson’s second novel about successful fund manager Kate Reddy (played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the film version), opens with Kate’s daughter Emma, 16, sobbing by her mother’s bed. A picture of Emma’s bare bottom has gone viral, and now her phone is buzzing with Facebook messages from strange men. This intelligent novel has plenty to say about middle-class family life in the digital age, about the menopause, and about rank misogyny in the City of London. Proof, if any were needed, that chick lit has grown up. So it’s disappointing when an old flame makes his all-too-predictable reappearance – and he’s rich, goodlooking, and completely without the type of unromantic modern baggage (kids, medical issues, workaholism) which would give the ensuing drama some heft. Pearson would do well to take a few pointers from Jane Austen, whose conflicted heroes, from Mr Darcy to Captain Wentworth, were always sharply delineated, and whose heroines never confused female emancipation with whinging on about the wrinkled skin on their necks. ■