Stop avoiding ‘chick-lit’ and broaden your tastes, men told

MEN should read more books by female authors – even if they come with a “chick-lit” label, according to a judge of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Figures show that men read four books by men for every one they read by a woman, whereas women’s reading is balanced between the sexes.

Mary Ann Sieghart, the writer and broadcaster chairing this year’s prize, said men avoid novels that are labelled as “chick-lit” – yet if those stories were written by male authors, men would be happy to read them. She spoke at the unveiling of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist. The chosen titles are The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-agostini, The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.

Asked if a prize solely for women was still necessary, Sieghart said: “The more prizes, the better, because authors need attention and so many great books get published which don’t get the attention they deserve.

“It’s true we no longer have Booker shortlists which are 100 per cent male, which is why the prize was set up in the first place, and thank goodness for that. But we still have a situation where women read around 50:50 books by men and women, but for men the ratio is about 80:20. They will read four books by men for every one by a woman.”

Sieghart said: “I would like men to broaden their horizons. With this shortlist, we can say to men: here are six utterly brilliant novels which you will enjoy as much as us. Obviously [this doesn’t apply to] all men. But they have this weird idea that if it’s written by a woman, it’s not going to be aimed at them. I think novels written by women are aimed at all humanity.”

She cited a 2009 bestseller by David Nicholls, which charts a relationship over two decades. It has sold more than five million copies.

Sieghart said: “Look at David Nicholls’s One Day – I hate the expression ‘chick-lit’ but if you’re going to label books by women ‘chick-lit’, then One Day is as much ‘chick-lit’ as anything. It’s a book about relationships, which would be labelled as ‘women’s fiction’ if the author was a woman.

“But it wasn’t labelled as that, and lots of men read it.”