Gone are the days when we brimmed with excitement to make a grab for the latest chick lit — where girls marry guys with perfectly chiselled bodies, where the guys swooned over beautiful girls, and where excited readers fostered hopes of a Prince Charming whisking them away from their mundane lives. Making way instead are books that welcome reality — where imperfect individuals fall in love with each other, where taboos no longer exist and where vampires and werewolves, thankfully, are not in love with humans. That’s what the latest form of young adult fiction is all about — reality.
Sick Lit is the new chick-lit. It intersperses realistic, unconventional characters with tales of cancer, suicide and depression. In the lucrative field of Young Adult (YA) Fiction, such books are runaway hits with the young and old readers alike. Despite being termed “morbid” by sceptics, the readers (especially teenagers) find themselves enraptured with these “real” concepts, irrespective of how blatantly they are portrayed. Having read The Fault in Our Stars a while ago, considering the plethora of agonised yet wonderful reviews my friends had, it wasn’t surprising that it stirred my emotions.
The book focuses on 16-year-old Hazel Grace suffering from cancer. She meets Augustus Waters, who joins a cancer support group after having recovered himself, and (spoiler alert!) he dies instead.
Sick Lit, however, is not a nascent fad. It began in the late 1980s with the emergence of books by Lurlene McDaniel and Jean Ferris, and ever since, such books have been labelled “tear-jerkers”. McDaniel’s books are especially known to make even the most strong-hearted people bawl their eyes out. She has been quoted as saying, “I write the kind of books I write because I want to help kids understand that nobody gets to pick what life dishes out to them.” True to her statement, she set forth writing some of the most sensitising and heart-wrenching tales like Don’t Die, My Love and Six Months to Live among several others. However, it was only after the soaring popularity of The Fault in Our Stars , which was published in 2012, that the rage for such books reached a new level.
Goodreads has also continuously given such books a high rating in their yearly YA fiction awards. Books like Me and Earlandthe Dying Girl, Thirteen Reasons Why, My Heart and Other Black Holes and Me Before You , which, as evidently can be presumed from the titles, focus on death and depression. Despite the hysterical sobs they evoke, the plausible reasons for their success can be due to the “coming of age” theme that’s highlighted, or merely due to the nostalgia that comes along with it.
The whole concept of love, coupled with the harsh realities of life, strikes a chord with the readers, who clearly want a respite from stories of people flitting around, oblivious to the cares of the world.
It lets people, who have terminal illnesses and suicidal tendencies, reassure themselves that they aren’t alone and that they can eventually get through their suffering by reading such sensitive yet humorous books that show a brighter side of struggles and life.
