Evening Herald
Mention women's fiction and a few storylines come to mind. Swooning heroins and dashing heroes from the pages of old-fashioned romance, explicit sex 'n' shopping bonkbusters a la Jilly Cooper, or the tasteful mid-life Aga saga turned on its head by an illicit passion as pioneered by Joanna Trollope.
But now it seems as if the populatiry of this commercial fiction is on the wane or at least undergoing a severe challenge from a more rugger quarter.
In place of beautifully groomed glamorous ladies of leisure falling into the arms of filthy rick Mister Right, we have twenty and thirtysomething career girls whose idea of winding down is whooping it up in Café en Seine on a Friday night, before spending Saturday dying of hangovers and fretting over the financial damage.
The "singleton" - as described so hilaroiusly in Bridget Jones's Diary which launched itself to the top of the bestsellers list last year - has entered the public domain sending publishers and literary agents into a frantic spin to sign up other novelists to feed this booming market.
In Ireland we have Marian Keyes, whose first print run for her current novel Rachel's Holiday was a staggering 230,000 copies.
From across the water we have Freya North, the 29-year-old who netted a vast three-book deal with publishers Heinemann on the strength of her bouncy first novel Sally.
Arabella Weit, Jane Green, Laura Ziogman, Jane Owen and Yvonne Roberts are also cashing in on the "middle-youth phenomenon" - women in their 20's and 30's who are putting off marriage and babies, and who want to read lively, irreverent fiction about the messy lives of their peers.
The titles of their largely confessional tones speak for themselves: Does my Bum Look Big in This?; Straight Talking; Camden Girls; Out of My Head; and The Trouble with Single Women.
Their endless rattling on about the hideousness of cellulite, the horoors of too much drink and drugs, the impossiblity of kicking the fags, the agony of dealing with their parents, siblings and one obnoxious, emotionally retarded male after another creates the impression that these writers are actually describing reality.
Readers may be better able to identify with these "ordinary women" than the images of female perfection in traditional commercial novels, but this new genre is arguably as fantasy based.
The book Bridget Jones turns out to be a modern-day reworking of Pride and Prejudice.
Our hapless heroine eventually snares the distant and disdainful Mark Darcy no less, a top international lawyer and owner of a gracious mansion in London's salubrious Holland Park.
The self-obsessed heroine of Rachel's Holiday reclaims her boyfriend in the end in a scene reminiscent of An Officer and A Gentleman.
Her boyfriend, who has forgiven her abusive behaviour, barges into the New York hostel where she is staying and gets down on his knees in front of her to the whoops and cheers of the watching women around.