This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers

""Chick lit as a genre,"" writes Merrick in her introduction, ""presents one very narrow representation of women's lives."" This anthology's 18 stories, on the other hand, present a frequently funny take on women's experiences ranging from the mundane to the riotously absurd. In the first story, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's ""The Thing Around Your Neck,"" a young Nigerian immigrant struggles to find her place in America. In Curtis Sittenfeld's ""Volunteers Are Shining Stars,"" a mildly neurotic young volunteer, maddeningly pecked at by her colleagues, is driven to violence. One of the most memorable stories, Jennifer Egan's ""Selling the General,"" puts a disgraced publicist to work for a genocidal dictator to pay for her daughter's private school tuition. Men get some representation too: Cristina Henríquez's ""Gabriella My Heart"" sees a gay man reflecting on a heterosexual high school crush, while the married biology professor in Binnie Kirshenbaum's ""The Matthew Effect"" pursues a student. Readers who've been Fendi'd and Choo'd to distraction would do well to pick this up.