Living With A Shopaholic

By Savitha V on Thursday, April 1, 2010 - 14:23

The Shopaholic series kicked off the "chick-lit" trend in a big way. Many a novels followed Sophie Kinsella's run away success; some succeeded while most failed. Savitha V takes a look at the series. 

Say hello to Rebecca Bloomwood, an incurable shopaholic and a very likable protagonist. She goes by the line "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping". The allure of the glittering stores, the smell of new things, the excitement of nicely wrapped parcels -- she loves it all. She is someone who feels that the only saving grace of a museum is its souvenir shop. Of course all the shopping is resulting in large sums accumulating on the credit card. But hey, bills can wait because there is a sale on.

Becky is a business journalist and a living contradiction of what she writes. While her articles in the financial magazine she works for are about saving and handling debt, she herself has not a penny saved up and is neck deep in debt thanks to her shopping sprees. There are times when the reader will invariably wonder, "How dumb can she be?" But then, that is Becky, the incurable and likable shopaholic. After all, she does go by the line So while she goes emptying the shelves of stores around London, her credit cards max out and Becky's solution is to ignore the bills.

From banks to stores to dates, Becky finds herself in quite a few awkward situations. Pulling her out of these and sticking by her through it all is best friend and room mate Suze. When the mounting bills become unavoidable, Becky decides something has to be done. SHe attempts cost cutting. But only ends up spending much more in preparation for the self-imposed lean period ahead. She gets herself a weekend job to earn an extra buck at an apparel store, but that doesn't go well either. And when a bad day comes along, all resolve dissolves and Becky heads out for some retail therapy. Meanwhile, her bankers get a good load of rather inventive stories that she concocts in order to avoid meetings.

The rest of the books in the Shopoholic series follows a similar pattern of shopping, unpaid credit card bills and so on, with the addition of a boy friend. Shopaholic Abroad is almost identical to the first, except that it is set in America and is more dramatic. Shopaholic Ties the Knot is a little far fetched and extravagant, while Shopaholic and Sister is rather ordinary. Shopaholic and Baby is once again quite an entertainer.

Sophie Kinsella's entertaining first person narrative makes for easy reading. Don't go looking for an enlightening read here, but it if you are trying to kill time while waiting in the airport, grab a Shopaholic.