PRESS

Daily Herald:
Girl Talk
July 21, 2005
by Jamie Sotonoff, Daily Herald Staff Writer

Naperville native Emily Giffin is proud of the ‘chick lit' label.

References to Naperville pop up everywhere in the best-selling books, “Something Borrowed” and the newly released sequel, “Something Blue.”

Ogden Avenue.

Colonial Café and Ice Cream.

A teacher named Mrs. Billone.

A school called “Naperville High” with a Huskies mascot, and the fictitious town of Naperville. Ind.

Its author Emily Giffin's way of giving props to her hometown. The 33-year-old spent her teen years in Naperville and has fond memories of those days.

“I like to throw in the Naperville angle,” said Giffin, prior to a book signing at Anderson Bookshop in downtown Naperville. “I had to pay respects to my old stomping grounds.”

Giffin's books focus on the friendships and love lives of young professional women.

But her real-life story is even more compelling. It's not just about a local girl done good. It's about a young woman who took a major career gamble – and won.

Big time.

How she did it.

As a kid, Giffin wrote books and tied them together with yarn. She also wrote plays, which she and her friends performed on the front porch.

“I remember one play, it was called ‘the Day the Mothers Ran Away', “ said her mother Mary Ann Elgin, laughing. “Of course we all enjoyed it. She was probably 8 or 9.”

By the time Giffin got to Naperville North High School, she was involved (and excelling) in a wide variety of activities, including the soccer team and the school newspaper. She even worked part-time at Colonial's Café and Ice Cream.

Her ninth-grade honors English teacher, Christine Billone, said Giffin's writing really stood out. It was unusually creative and her word choice was very precise.

“Emily shined,” Billone said. “I did think, this is someone, were going to hear about someday. And it's going to involve writing.”

Giffin got an A in that class, as she did in nearly every class she took. Her great grades and well-rounded resume gave her unlimited choices of colleges and careers. Even though she loved writing, she chose to study law instead.

I don't know. I really liked the theory and the thinking process (of law), “Giffin said. “It just seemed like a good choice to make at the time.”

After college and law school, Giffin landed a high-paying job with one of the country's top law firms and moved to New York City.

It seemed she had the world by a string. But something wasn't right.

She felt stifled by her job's long hours and tedious work. On nights and weekends, she started to write a novel.

When it was finally done, in 2001, she enthusiastically handed it over to her agent. Then she learned a hard lesson: Writing a book isn't just about putting a great story on paper. There are agents, publishing companies, contracts and other business issues to deal with.

Giffin said her agent was less than enthused with her and her book, and it ended up being summarily rejected by every publisher.

“Let's just say, it was a bad experience,” Giffin said.

Most people would have taken this as a sign, especially when a promising legal career was waiting in the wings.

But Giffin persisted. Even though she was discouraged, her gut was telling her keep writing.

“I knew I wanted to pay back my (school) loans and then make a change,” she said. “I decided to move to London, live off my savings and give myself a year to write.”

Giffin called her mom, a librarian at the Lisle Public Library, and told her about her plans. The news didn't go over too well at first.

“I said, ‘What about your career?' And she said, ‘Let the dream die, Mom. I hate being a lawyer,'”her mother said.

After arriving in London in 200, Giffin wrote “Something Borrowed.” She hired a new agent – someone who believed in her – and soon a major publishing company believed in her, too. St. Martins Press offered her a two-book deal.

“I thought, two books? Yay! But then it was, two books? Oh no! She said.

Giffin moved back to the United States and released “Something Borrowed”, the story of two friends involved with the same guy.

What happened next is still a bit surreal to Giffin: Snooty book critics gave her novel rave reviews. They were calling it “chick lit with heart” and praised her writing as being “intelligent.”

Her book started climbing up the New York Times bestseller list, at one point hitting the No. 30 spot.

“I was checking my Amazon.com ranking compulsively,” Giffin said. “And I would walk through the airport and see my book displayed (at a bookstore) and say, ‘Oh my God! That's my book!”

The sequel, “Something Blue,” was released a few weeks ago and became an instant best seller, too. The critics heaped praise on her once again, and Entertainment weekly graded it in “A.” Within a year, she had two best-selling books to her credit.

Tickled by her success, family and friends e-mail her photos of her books on display in prominent places, and her mom's co-worker took a picture of three people on vacation in Mexico, all reading Giffin's book on the beach.

Despite Giffin's newfound fame (she has a second two-book deal now), she claims to lead a very “unglamorous” life in Atlanta with her husband and twin 18-month-old boys.

When she's not changing diapers or singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” with her boys, she's working on her third novel. It's due out next September, and it's about a woman who doesn't want to have a child but her husband does.

“It's my dream just to see this happen,” Giffin said.

Billone is not surprising to see her former student become a best-selling author.

“Emily knows how to find her luck,” Billone said. “She's tuned in to the world and to what people want to read.”

The ‘chick lit' stigma.

Giffin's books are often categorized as “chick lit.”

The catch phrase refers to novels that appeal to women, but the label has a negative connotation. Chick lit is seen as ultra-light – genre that at times seems to define women mainly by their relationships with men and designers shoes.

“I'm proud to be called “chick lit” and bad “chick lit.”

The catch phrase refers to novels that appeal to women, but the label has a negative connotation. Chick lit is seen as ultra-light – a genre that at times seems to define women mainly by their relationships with men and designer shoes.

This angers Giffin, who concedes that there is good” chick lit” and bad “chick lit.”

“I'm proud to be called ‘chick lit,'” Giffin said. “I benefit from that label.”

The fact is, women like to read stories about other women their own age who are in situations they can relate to. To brush it off as “dumb chick lit” is unfair, Giffin argues.

“That denigrates women – that their relationships and concerns are frivolous – and that's not true,” she said. “There are a lot of women out there who want to read those ‘Sex and the City'-like books.”

The critics call it whatever they want; this Naperville native is a publishing success story.

“I'm so proud of her,” her mother said. “I think it's very cool when you follow your dream and take a chance.