Aspirations and the aftermath of Jane Green

I'd promised I'd revisit Jane Green. Well, I've actually spent a lot of time trying to forget about her. As I was warned, her characters are horrible. To save you the job of wading through the book, Tash gets together with Adam: nice, reliable Adam. This should be her happy-ever-after. It isn't. She's so worried about their relationship lacking in 'passion' (though obviously they still get to have lots of fantastic sex), she gets caught in a clinch with one of Adam's 'friends' and has to narrowly escape having sex with him before she can realise Adam is her happy-ever-after. Yawn. Adam is obviously a complete sap to take her back and how we are meant to rejoice in their reunion, I don't know.

There's obviously meant to be something very aspirational about Tash's lifestyle - I don't get that either. Her job as a producer on a daytime Richard and Judy show, for starters, sounds rubbish. She organizes crappy phone-ins and gets either shouted at or propositioned or both. Brill.

It's also all the cultural references to the food they eat, the clothes they wear and even to where they live. The book is now over ten years old and the references simply don't cut it any more. There's a very strange passage about what Tash decides to bring along to a barbecue for example, like some crusty bread is a character attribute. And there's endless descriptions about fashion: joyless, souless, late 90s fashion.

(image via Fatshionista)

I don't think Jane Green would approve of this photo as it uses a plus size model. For her thin = happy, apparently. Or at least thin = shaggable. But ignore the (very attractive) model. It's the clothes I need you to look at. This is a Tash late 90s wonder of an outfit, black bra showing under a black, possibly Lycra, suit. There's bound to be some La Perla underwear going on under there too. 

If I'd been reading this in the late 90s, would this aspirational stuff have worked? Surely you should be able to pick up on glamour whenever you read something, whether it's an Anya Seaton historical number or a Nancy Mitford 40s belle or an old copy of Vogue. I'm clearly going to have to track down some contemporary chick lit and find out what people seem to aspire to now. I may even return to Jane Green (my sister owns a lot of her books) to see if her taste in men, food or clothes has changed over the last decade. For now I need to concentrate on heroin addicted teenage runaways in Bristol for my book club but I do hope Shopaholic arrives tomorrow...