the cool girl books phenomenon
postcard 29: on contemporary literary fiction, the aestheticization and tropification of reading, and 'cool girl books'
"What if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?"
prelude
How, I wondered, might a person, a people, take root, roots and rootlessness, the preservation of what little remains of the past, such were thoughts that blew through me on any given morning, standing very still in the porch, or in the garden, in my bare feet, feeling suddenly: that sound, that rushing, it is the wind, it is the trees!
—Study For Obedience, Sarah Bernstein
I read a lot of articles. Most of them are good, and some of them are excellent—so excellent that they linger in my mind, and I end up going back to them time and again. Some that are in this category include:
The Plight of the Eldest Daughter by Sarah Sloat
Periwinkle, the Color of Poison, Modernism, and Dusk by Katy Kelleher
The Joy of Sulk by Rebecca Roache
In Dark Times, I Sought Out the Turmoil of Caravaggio’s Paintings by Teju Cole
Remembering Laika, Space Dog and Soviet Hero by Alex Wellerstein
If you asked me to rank my favorite reads—books and articles alike in one list, these would all make my top ten. Longform articles often get left in the dust because they’re not quite a normal ‘news article’ but not a published physical book copy either, but I think reading a good article is like feeding your brain.
A very small number of articles stay in my mind simply because of how much they frustrate me. I like opinion pieces because I like reading people’s thoughts and thinking about my stance and position on them, even if I ultimately disagree with the author. However, one article lingers in my mind and I want to talk about it because I do think it fits with the ongoing discourse of the “literary it girl” or “cool girl books”. Perhaps talking about it is like beating a dead horse because this discourse has been talked about and dissected into oblivion, but I still want offer my two cents.
“Her prose is bare; her characters are depressed and alienated. This literary trend has coagulated into parody.”
I read “The Curse of the Cool Girl Novelist” by Charlotte Stroud almost a year ago, and it has stayed in my mind ever since. Most of my reading taste revolves around what this author seems to classify as a “cool girl novel”, and I have to admit—whenever I buy a book at the bookstore now, I wonder if the book classifies as the ‘trend’ that the author tried to criticize in this article. As someone who thinks she does have a pretty diverse taste in books, I admit that it did make me question a lot of what I love.
In the article, Stroud decries the genre of ‘cool girl novelist books’, generalizing it to this paragraph below:
“The anti-heroine of these novels is usually a PhD student (or at least an MA), crucially distinguishing her from the common undergraduate masses. Her knowledge of intersectional theory has left her crippled by a near constant anxiety about power imbalances and inequality.”
Seems like a caricature, right? If I had just read the two parts I quoted without knowing the context, I would assume she was talking about the books mentioned by the number of pretentious dicks I’ve been on dates with who said, “God, Elle, you just don’t get Franzen the way I do.” Swap ‘heroine’ for ‘hero’, and you’ll get one of the most common type of characters that have been written throughout history by men. This is not a new genre of writing like Stroud proposes—it has been written over and over again, by both men and women alike.
The phrases “cool girl books,” “sad girl books,” or “hot girl books” have taken a life of their own. I would know—I read a lot of them, and I’m on every book-based niche on social media platforms (Bookstagram, Booktok, Goodreads). And the truth is that while many do sound like the next, there are so many meaningful and complex books that truly explore the nuances of ‘being sad’ and the psyche of female characters. The synopses may sound similar because most of these books are character-heavy over plot-heavy, but they are different in their own ways. So generalizing the specific niche of literary fiction and writing about it in such a manner that disparages and disregards all its subtleties, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
However, I do think this article very much reflects on the post-pandemic zeitgeist when it comes to reading and how people approach reading. It has, for better or for worse, become a trend and become a public way to showcase your taste and intelligence. Thus, it has also fallen victim to the tropification of aesthetics. “Sad girl books” are not so much different than “that girl,” “vanilla girl,” or “clean girl.” While literature is of course, different from material consumer goods, it has started being treated as such, which is why there has been a proliferation of aestheticizing and generalizing genres of literature.
I do think that addresses a larger issue, which seems to be society (online culture, in particular)’s inability to let things be their own things, and the incessant need to categorize and group something into a curated aesthetic. Ironically, the author seems to fall victim to this when she criticizes this genre she has made up. While lamenting about how ‘all of these books sound the same’, she has failed to recognize that the books she mentions are vastly different from one another. Accordingly, she failed to give one single shred of textual evidence that these books had any sort of similarity other than the fact that it featured 1) a woman protagonist who 2) had a lot of internal struggles.
I am sure there is a correct way to find fault with the current literary scene, but I know for sure that the way this article approaches it, is not.
“In Britain alone, the depressed and alienated woman is the subject of such novels as Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts, Jo Hamya’s Three Rooms, Chloë Ashby’s Wet Paint, Natasha Brown’s Assembly, Sarah Bernstein’s The Coming Bad Days and Daisy Lafarge’s Paul. In America, the terminally sad girl is the subject of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Halle Butler’s The New Me. Irish examples of the genre include Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times, Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special, and, it almost goes without saying, any novel by Sally Rooney.”
“If only a handful of the writers of the aforementioned novels, some of whom are clearly very talented, would withdraw from this death spiral and chart a route upwards. This would likely involve opening some windows, going outside, meeting other (different) people and reading something besides Audre Lorde, Sylvia Plath and Annie Ernaux. By such means, their novels would claw their way back towards the light, and away from the joyless mud they have all been wallowing in.”
Anyone who has read even two of these books will know that they are nothing like each other. Is it such an unspeakable crime that women write about sad and aimless women in their twenties, when that is usually the demographic? More people in their twenties feel aimless and lost than those that do not. It is doing these authors a massive disservice by coagulating these books into a big amorphous glob and then denouncing it.
There is nothing wrong or overdone about writing about pain and suffering in order to put it under a microscope and examine it, in order to validate it. In fact, that is quite literally what authors have been doing for thousands of years. Writing about sadness is nothing new—it may likely be one of the longest constants in literary history. In the same vein, being aware and rightfully frustrated of critical social issues does not mean that the book is unilaterally depressing or ‘death-spiraling’. More often than not, many of these books do have meaningful, and hopeful messages.
(And I say ‘these books’ the way she talks about them throughout her article, although I’m still not sure exactly what that entails).
For me, a cool girl book, to put it short, is a book that I feel is effortlessly smart. It is not necessarily about a specific character type or plot, but rather how I feel after reading. Whether this is something written in the 1700s or last week doesn’t matter. And yes, some do fit in the ‘sad girl lit fic’ category (although i do have qualms of what people classify as that, but that’s another topic for another day).
Certain authors and their books feel like brain food, like the world and its axis has shifted a bit. If I saw you reading any of these books (which I will make a post about soon, because this post will get too long), I would think you are ‘cool’ in the way where it is subtly evident that you are well read and eloquent—a cultured sort of intelligent. And these books she disparages? More often than not, they have substance and excellent takeaways.
One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Beautiful World Where Are You, which seems to fall right into the category of these sort of books:
Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.
When I first read this, it made my heart swell. The reason why I love these books more than purposefully saccharine and optimistic books is because joy within melancholy feels more meaningful to me. I think that is why I love reading literary fiction, especially contemporary literary fiction by female authors. If we only pay attention to what Stroud points out, we will be ignoring critical aspects and the bigger picture of each book.
Stroud says that she hopes people read something besides Audre Lorde, Sylvia Plath, and Annie Ernaux. The fact that these three authors are so vastly different from one another actually made me laugh at her statement. Nobody is picking up Sister Outsider and The Bell Jar and thinking, ‘these two books are so similar’. Nobody is picking up My Year of Rest and Relaxation and thinking that it is in any vein similar to Boy Parts.
It has me wondering if she even read a single book she mentions, or just critiques it from seeing the general (often misguided itself) discourse around it. My hope for her is that she actually decides to pick up one of these books she seems to know so much about.
interlude i: what i read this week
I took a little break from my weekly postcard last week because my mid-week postcard made me feel a bit emotionally exhausted. I am truly grateful for all the comments I got on it, and I am glad I created such a space for people to feel safe to share.
In the last two weeks, I read four books: I read Snowflake by Louise Nelson, Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, and Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein. I am currently reading The Ugly History of Beautiful Things by Katy Kelleher, which is such a wonderful essay collection by one of my favorite writers.
I’ll put up the ratings and short reviews on my Goodreads sometime the following week!
Here are ten articles to read this week:
Sally Rooney: ‘Falling in love when I was very young transformed my life’
Sally Rooney on romance, writing about sex and, the Normal People phenomenon and her new novel, Intermezzo.
The Exhilarating Brilliance of Maggie Smith
Success came early for the late British actor, who throughout her career continued to captivate audiences with her edgy, glinting gifts.
Deborah Levy: “I was thinking about existence. And what it added up to. Had I done okay? Who was doing the judging? Had there been enough happy years, had there been enough love and loving? Were my own books, the ones I had written, good enough?”
“For children like me, growing up in an utopian community, life was a bewildering chaos of freedom and indoctrination.”
Sally Rooney Is Trying Something New
A casual reader (or dismisser) of Rooney might think all her books are the same. But her new novel is a darker, sadder departure from the formula—and it’s better for it.
Of Unicorns: On My Little Pony
“My earliest memories are of my own interest in perfection. The supreme object of my interest, of my deepest intellectual and sensual love, was a product designed and manufactured with the express aim of capturing the attention of very young girls.”
Up Close, Hieronymus Bosch Is a Psychedelic Trip
Five hundred years on, and its all about Bosch. With dozens of books published on the Flemish painter, new scholarship, and major museum exhibitions, the impact of the artist on popular culture is undeniable.
Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss.
Completed more than a century ago, these artworks reveal the Impressionist's triumphs—and struggles.
In Cold Blood—I: The Last to See Them Alive
An unspeakable crime in the heartland.
interlude ii: what i watched this week
I just rewatched a few movies and continued my rerun of Grey’s Anatomy! I rewatched Bones and All, The Favorite, When Harry Met Sally, and The One I Love.
Here is my Letterboxd for reference.
postlude
things i love right now: my jany perfume from sora dora, morning walks along the beach when the weather is cooler, sweater shopping, journaling at 6 in the morning.
i love this!! men have been writing 'sad boy books' for decades (centuries, even) and no one would lump them all together because of the author's gender. and the recommendations are wonderful!
This was a great read! I commented something on a Mina Le post recently that I think also applies to this discussion: As someone who has social media but does not have the apps on my phone (I really only use to post a few times a year- basically I use social media but I don’t consume it) I have a really interesting perspective on all of this. Because I don’t consume discourse, I am able to love what I love freely, and pick and choose the content I want to watch or receive about it. It’s actually quite sad to me that people are turning things they love into real life anxieties, or dimming their initial positive feelings about it, just because of what other people are saying.
Basically, I have literally no idea what any of this cool girl or vanilla girl or sad girl thing is. I just read what I want because I don’t derive a sense of worth or identity from what I read. I just absolutely adore reading and always have. I think people should read whatever they want without identifying with it, or on the other end, justifying it. Doing either of those seems to me like an exercise of ego at work.
This also made me think of a Hozier lyric as well: “I wouldn’t fare well…. Critic hoping to be remembered kind of wouldn't fare well”. Anyone who critics is building on someone else’s creation and therefore nothing able to withstand on its own. That to me is enough to dismiss most criticisms which allows me to enjoy freely!