Sparkle

Among all the wrist-to-the-brow disparagements of romance there seems to be a special sneer for what’s sometimes called ‘chick lit’–the sprightly, often funny, light-hearted romantic story that is about relationships (romantic, familial, fraternal), rather than blood, guts, and the fate of nations, or heavy philosophical musings.

The reasons for this seem obvious to me–besides the cultural baggage that dictates anything by or about women is automatically lesser than stuff by men about men, the...