McCafferty’s ‘Charmed Thirds’ Makes Chick-lit Legit

When Kaavya Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life” made headlines for using passages “strikingly similar” to Megan McCafferty’s “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings,” an undergraduate wrote a letter to The Crimson, complimenting reporter David Zhou on his “infinite patience [for] reading countless crappy chick-lit passages.”

Chick-lit has gotten a bum rap in the past few years, and Viswanathan’s actions did little to improve the genre’s reputation. But McCafferty, as the Village Voice pointed out in May, should not suffer for Viswanathan’s sins; it may be easy to deride the author who inspired the bulk of Viswanathan’s plagiarism, but it’s not fair to do so without reading her work.

Chick-lit begs belittlement because it doesn’t present itself as pure literature. Two-thirds of the cover of McCafferty’s newest book, “Charmed Thirds,” shows the hind-quarters of the book’s twenty-something Columbia University protagonist, Jessica Darling, who appears to be lounging in a sparsely decorated room with all of the trappings of college life. At first glance, the book looks like an unusually thick extension to YM magazine.

But, of course, one should never judge a book by its cover. Besides, those who purchase the hardcover edition of “Charmed Thirds” can always slip off the jacket; I did.

The brave souls who venture into the book’s 360 pages will be pleasantly surprised. Columbia grad McCafferty has captured much of the contemporary college (and particularly, college female) experience, from sitting with peers in “iPod isolation”—a habit that fascinates Jessica for being “social, yet solipsistic at the same time”—to Ivy League parties, “full of smart, funny people who are all used to being the smartest, funniest person in the room.”

Jessica feels such shindigs are “existentially” exhausting. The participants “spend the whole party talking over one another, overlapping and overtaking the conversation to prove that they are the smartest, funniest person in the room, if not the entire planet.” Not only is she pithy; she’s on the mark.

It’s observations like these that make “Charmed Thirds” a true novel in its own right. As literature should, the work reveals how we really live and think—perhaps just a little more literally than most books.

“Charmed Thirds” also captures the uncertainty and self-doubt that college—especially freshman year—can bring. When Jessica returns to her high school for graduation, she speaks to a departing senior brimming with hubris.

Jessica forgives the girl for her arrogance, understanding that “I was exactly like her just one year ago...Where did I get off being so confident? I didn’t know anything about anything. And the only difference between then and now is this: I may know more than I used to, but my wisdom pales in comparison to that which I’ve yet to learn.”

How many Harvard students, wizened from Expos, Ec 10, and reading period, have felt the same?

Again, there’s something to be said for a book full of observations and musings that could have been said or thought by any of us.

“Kaavyagate” made the world think that chick-lit could offer no new insights, that the experiences of contemporary young women, reflected in literature, were mass-produced and cliché. “Charmed Thirds,” on the other hand, shows us the genre at its best; it’s literature full of life, unique voices, and unforgettable characters.

There’s a little bit of Jessica Darling in all of us—but only those with the “patience” to read “Charmed Thirds” get to find that out.

—Reviewer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.