John Lanchester is made of Sterner stuff. "The Debt to Pleasure" is not quite lad lit.
Otherwise intelligent men descend upon this genre in the hope of generating some fame and filthy lucre (which might fund their indulgence in literary fiction), whereas women engage in it as either writer or reader with a sincerity and pleasure that men cannot seem to match. Most chick lit that I’ve read (e.g., Kathy Lette – nobody does upwardly mobile English bourgeois quite like an Australian) seems to be at home in its genre, whereas most lad lit seems to me to be lost in imitation, as if the author was writing down to this level, while waiting to be discovered and offered the opportunity to write something more ambitious and literary. There is a trend in English writing towards "lad lit", by way of imitation of "chick lit".
This is an odd little book, but one that is hugely rewarding.
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