Wendi Murdoch, Chick-Lit Heroine?

Whatever happens to Rupert Murdoch and his media empire, Tuesday’s colorful parliamentary hearings may yet provide an unexpected boost to the publishing industry. As Ian has already pointed out, CNN host and former Fleet Street fixture Piers Morgan used the spectacle of the Murdochs’ testimony to flog his book “The Insider.” But it turns out Morgan wasn’t the only author of note involved in the debacle.

Louise Mensch, the Conservative M.P. who was was grilling James Murdoch when Jonnie Marbles (who is not, as his name might suggest, a character from “The Sopranos”) decided to pounce, is also the author of fourteen chick-lit novels. Published under her maiden name, Louise Bagshawe, the books have nebulous-yet-girly titles like “Glitz,” “Sparkles,” and “Glamour,” and feature the usual array of brainy-but-beautiful chick-lit heroines.

In characteristically British fashion, Mensch is self-deprecating when it comes to the subject of her novels. “Obviously they have no redeeming literary merit at all,” she told the Times of London in a 2007 profile, though perhaps she is understating the case. In an interview posted on her author Web site, Mensch claims that, beneath the fluff, her books contain a message of female empowerment: “All of them feature feminist heroines making it on their own. I simply couldn’t write about some drippy Cinderella because I don’t admire those women.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com