Jenny Colgan: Office romance

Jenny Colgan explores the challenges of ChickLit with Laura Jane MacBeth and explains why her latest novel is an Arthurian quest set in an office in Coventry

Jenny Colgan is late. Not fashionably late, or rude late, or obnoxious I'm-a-successful-ChickLit-author-and-I-can-be-late. Rather, as her publisher explains to me, late like one of her tumbledown heroines would be – luggage lost, trains delayed, tube lines closed, having arrived from Thailand in a cheesecloth shirt, khaki skirt and BA travel socks to the snowiest London in years.

Having only the grainy black-and-white dustjacket photo of her first novel for a visual clue, I wait in the foyer of Noho's Charlotte Street Hotel with her new book propped at an ostentatious angle. When she finally arrives – small, blonde, and (initially) softly-spoken – we move to the noisy café next door to discuss the collapse of London transport, the state of ChickLit and her latest offering, Working Wonders (HarperCollins, £9.99), while she gets into her laughing, shrieking, swearing stride.

Colgan is almost as famous for her staunch defences of the ChickLit genre as her fiction. Having taken "Auntie Beryl" Bainbridge and any other detractor on in print and interview, Jenny is a real battler for her cause: popular women's fiction. Perhaps this is why she has taken to the battlefield – or "naff paintball weekend" – with gusto in this her fourth novel, the story of Arthur and his quest (geddit) to win the City of Culture title for his grey hometown Camelot – er, Coventry.

Besides a childhood love of the original legend, Jenny cites the influence of TH White's reworking, The Once And Future King. "I loved that mixing of a great big story with the minutiae of social politics. I really liked that idea. And I also wanted to draw on a bigger canvas." And in some ways, this return to the original (Arthurian) romance seems the logical step backward for the love-centric genre.

While Colgan is keen to stress that this mythic allegory is more of an optional extra, it's hard to miss with names like Kay, Howard, and (Mer)Lynn popping up all over the place. Indeed, much of the humour derives from this clashing of times, spheres, and the trivial alongside the significant – but I wonder if she thought this mundane setting risky, in a genre famed for its escapism? "Perhaps, but then I don't think these books are escapist. That would imply that they're aspirational, when they're usually about normal people, doing normal things: paying their rent, living in flat-shares. I think they're quite reflective really, as much as aspirational."

Certainly, Colgan has steered clear of that branch of ChickLit (ChicLit?) featuring impossibly glamorous beauties and their film-star boyfriends. "I was a reader for a long time before I was a writer and I never liked those kinds of [novels] where the heroine is really gorgeous-looking and has a job in the media, because she already had the two things I wanted. Nothing that happened to her could really interest me.

"I've always steered away from that. And my heroines never have to have makeovers to do well – they're always quite scruffy and woolly." Colgan sees herself as closest to Holly in Talking To Addison, as "she's quite gauche and falls down a lot".

She must be doing something right. Since the big ChickLit backlash (points of reference: literary carping; identikit titles; Amy Jenkins's Honeymoon), publishers have been rather more cautious in snapping up tales of young love in London. Does she view this as a tightening of belts? "The public makes a publisher – but I think it was inevitable. I don't know if it was just a balancing out of the voices that needed to be heard. But it's like in movies and music and everything else – if one thing does well, a lot of people imitate it, and in the end only certain people will come out the other end."

Having survived this literary mixer, Colgan is as enthusiastic about the genre as ever. While some authors have complained of the "assembly line" nature of ChickLit, Colgan will not be drawn: "It's a lovely way to earn a living." Prodding further, I ask if she was happy with the packaging of Working Wonders. Despite its predominantly male perspective, the dustjacket features a woman and the same jaunty typeface of her other books. Didn't she find this limiting? "Well, [the publishers] wouldn't put a man on the front. But it's all about trying to get to the marketplace. Women buy a massive percentage of books in this country, and for everyone that won't buy that kind of cover, there's someone who will. It's just good to get your books in there."

Yet, for all Colgan's devotion to the ChickLit cause, Working Wonders would seem to be bending the rules, albeit modestly. While the tone and register of the novel is in line with her other efforts (sarcastic, well-observed and purposefully lightweight), her central character is (gosh) a man, the romance plot less than uplifting, and the female characters largely unsympathetic. Was she trying to break the ChickLit mould?

"It wasn't as conscious as that. I wanted to write about an office, that was important, and men tend to have more at stake in the workplace. Work defines a man – whereas an awful lots of things define a woman, whether it's their family or friendships. Arthur is a character who feels he ought to be taking his work a lot more seriously, and yet he hates it at the same time. I think a lot of people have that dilemma – where you think, 'I've got to kiss this particular arse but I hate it, I hate what it's doing to me.' A lot of it was getting out how unhappy I was in my office career, which looked like it was going to be my entire career for a long time." Colgan worked as an NHS administrator for six years.

It emerges that Working Wonders was originally set in Slough until, a quarter through, Colgan realised she had been gazumped by Ricky Gervais' comic creation, and switched the setting to a city she admits, shamefully, she has never visited. "I picked Coventry because people always joke about how ugly it is. But it's really meant to be anywhere, anytown."

Where Working Wonders reverts to type is in its lack of sex. Given ChickLit's preoccupation with romance, does she think it unusual that the writers steer steadfastly clear of the bedroom? "It's amazing! I think it's because they are all nice middle-class girls, whose parents read everything they do. I swear to God that's what it is! And it astounds me, given how much drinking and swearing there is in my books, that there's never any sex at all! Funnily enough, I write for the Erotic Review, and that's easier because it's a subscribed magazine, and it's not going to be read by everyone. But I've just written in my fifth book a quite fully described kissing scene that's quite important. Oh my God! I found it so hard. And there's a big old sex scene coming up that I've got to write and I'm not looking forward to that in the slightest."

Sex scenes aside, Colgan clearly enjoys her place in the ChickLit-erary landscape. Even the harsh critical response to her genre of choice doesn't trouble her. "I think it's hilarious. Everyone has their little pets, so it's 'ChickLit is rubbish, unless it's my journalist friend'." She thinks that the older women writers "perceive us as having it too easy. But it does get a bit ridiculous when people like Kathy Lette start slagging it off, I mean, come on! It's such a lazy, easy target; there's good and bad books in the genre like there are anywhere."

Colgan admits to a certain bemusement at the antipathy with which ChickLit is received, and the lengths people go to disguise liking it. But would she never want to attempt something weightier? "The thing is, I'm not a stylist; I like things that make me laugh. And I like talking to people on quite a basic level. I think everyone's style is set to an extent. If you set out to write a particular kind of book, you're going to fail. You just write the book that's there, and if it's just kind of fluffy and giggly, then that's your 'head' – you don't have Salman Rushdie's head, and that's a good thing because everyone's different. But no one I know who writes ChickLit novels takes the process any less seriously than Salman does. It's just the same whatever you do."

Biography

Jenny Colgan was born in 1971 in Prestwick, west Scotland. Both her parents are teachers, and she has two brothers, Robin and Dominic. Colgan left school at 16 to study philosophy at Edinburgh University, after which she moved to London to do a postgraduate degree in arts administration. She left to become an NHS management trainee, and worked for six years in health service administration. Following the end of a three-year relationship, Colgan joined a class in stand-up comedy. Having dabbled in stand-up, she considered a career as a cartoonist, before trying her hand more successfully at writing. Her first novel, Amanda's Wedding, was published in January 2000. Her other novels include Talking to Addison (2001), Looking For Andrew McCarthy (2002), and her latest, Working Wonders (HarperCollins), on sale next week. Jenny Colgan has sold film options on all her novels. Now based in Fitzrovia, London, she also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines.