Thank you to Steven Scaffardi for inviting Kincavel Korner to be part of the blog tour for his latest book, The Flood!
What is lad lit?
I nostalgically refer to the 90s as the decade of my youth. Both my high school and college years happened during that 10 year period, which in turn means that all seven of those wonderful, weird and awkward teenage years also came during that era too.
I danced to music by The Prodigy, fell in love with Kelly Kapowski, and to this very day I still quote lines from Pulp Fiction and Dazed and Confused.
It was the decade where the ‘lad’ phenomenon took off. Lads mags such as FHM and Esquire filled their pages with content that young men wanted to read about, from football to music to beer to (of course) women.
But it wasn’t just the shelves on the newsstand that finally started speaking to men. The arrival of great novels such as Man and Boy by Tony Parsons and High Fidelity by Nick Hornby meant that bookstores had a new section, and lad lit was born. In that very moment, men finally had had a form of literature that talked to them. But what happened? While chick lit has gone from strength to strength, lad lit has somewhat disappeared into obscurity.
Writing in The Telegraph a couple of years ago, novelist Jamie Fewery asked the question Why don’t men read novels anymore? and in doing so he attempted to delve deeper into the debate rather than stopping at the ‘women read more than men’ answer.
He wrote: ‘By its nature, women’s fiction is a broad genre. But it’s also an important one that acknowledges inherently that the reading of fiction has a great impact on emotional intelligence. A male equivalent of the genre simply doesn’t exist, or at least in decent numbers.’
‘I should make it clear at this point that I’m not talking about literary fiction. Highbrow, intellectual novels have always existed, and appeal equally to women and men. I’m talking about commercial fiction; novels aimed at a chap who just wants something decent yet distracting to read on the train. Something well-written, readable and funny about modern life from a male perspective.’
Jamie goes on to argue that while great writers of that era like Hornby and Parsons were pioneers, no one else really picked up the torch and kept running with it, so the flame slowly started to burn out.
That is until now, because I believe that two decades later lad lit is making a comeback and reigniting that flame. Just take a look around at the talent writing novels that lad lit Godfathers Hornby and Parsons would be proud of. Mike Gayle, Danny Wallace, Matt Dunn, Jon Rance, and Nick Spalding are to name but a few.
They all write stories about relationships, emotions and day-to-day life experiences from the perspective of a male protagonist; told with humour, charm and wit, which leave many readers laughing out loud at the scenarios men get into.
That is why I embarked on the Lad Lit Blog Tour, as I was just as passionate about promoting this genre as much as I am about promoting my Sex, Love and Dating Disasters series. It’s just as important to make sure that men have a genre they can call their own, as it is to balance out all of the chick lit the girls are reading.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not having a go at chick lit. I just think it causes men unnecessary headaches. Chick lit often paints a picture of the perfect happy ever after ending that we simply can’t compete with. It’s not like we don’t try, but we’re men, you know? If we get things right two times out of 10 with our wives and girlfriends we’ve had a pretty good week.
And that, my friends, is the beauty of lad lit. It pushes the boundaries of what it’s like to be your average every day Joe. It doesn’t pull any punches or pretend to be something it’s not. It’s not a perfect specimen of a man with a stupid surname first name like Parker or Carter, who drives an Audi R8 Coupé and plays squash at practically a professional level. It’s a guy called Dave or John who drives a Vauxhall Corsa and is quite happy playing a bit of five-a-side football on a Wednesday night.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that lad lit isn’t the stranger everyone thinks it is and if we all gave it a second chance to come out from its 90s wilderness, then the world of book reading would be a much funnier place.
Steven Scaffardi is the author of the Sex, Love and Dating Disaster series. His first novel, The Drought, is the laugh-out-loud tale of one man’s quest to overcome the throes of a sexual drought. After the stormy break-up with his girlfriend of three years, Dan Hilles is faced with the daunting task of throwing himself back into the life of a single man. With the help of his three best pals, Dan is desperate and determined to get his leg-over with hilarious consequences!
The Drought is available to download for FREE at Amazon between April 28 – May 2 or you can buy it now for 99p (eBook) or £8.99 (paperback). His second novel The Flood will be released on the Kindle on April 30 but you can pre-order a copy now for just 99p. The paperback version will be available on May 19.
Follow all of the fun on his blog tour by following him on Twitter @SteveScaffardi using the hashtag #LadLitBlogTour. More information about Steven and his books can be found on his blog.
And then I dyed my hair brown in preparation for shaving it all off in August for Macmillan Cancer Support and sending to Little Princess Trust to be made into wigs for kids who have lost their hair to cancer treatment. My cousin’s fiance will be doing the honours, and to be honest, I can hardly wait to have it all taken off! For the record, I will be having my head SHAVED, not just having my hair cut short!
Kincavel Korner 