Heart of daftness
From M. G. Sherlock Sir: Debbie Barham (Bridget Jones's dowry', 7 April) rightly bemoans the dreadful flood of pap novels spawned by Bridget Jones. The mystery of it all is that Helen Fielding's original — tedious, repetitive, feebly written, vacuous and generally a misery to plough through — should have been so successful to begin with.
No doubt the fashion for this stuff will fade, in time. Publishers should think back to the early Eighties and the boom in fiction that was the exact opposite of that in vogue now. Remember the heyday of Virago and the Women's Press and Spare Rib magazine, and all those man-hating novels and plays about sisterhood and female solidarity and women being illused by men and learning to do quite well without them? Instead of planning their whole lives, as they do now, with the sole aim of attracting men? One can argue about which extreme is dafter, but how trends and tastes can change in 20 years!
MG. Sherlock
London SW1
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