There has been much artistic hand-wringing over whether the recession will herald a new wave of creativity. Who could prove a worthy successor to John Steinbeck, say, who chronicled dustbowl recession hardships in The Grapes of Wrath ? First up to the starting line in the race to inherit Steinbeck's title is the chic-lit brigade. Take Sarah Strohmeyer's The Penny Pinchers Club , one of several books on the theme of heroines trading in their expensive butter-blonde highlights for a recession brown. As the clouds gather, the heroine Kat kicks her $240-a-month Starbucks habit. But what starts out as a simple effort to cut costs becomes an over-the-top obsession when Kat joins an eclectic but lovable group of savers called the Penny Pinchers Club. Soon she is pumping her petrol at dawn (when it is thicker) and serving dinner made from food retrieved from the grocery store dumpster. Or how about Wendy Walker's forthcoming Social Lives ? In it a Connecticut hedge-fund wife battles with her diminishing housekeeping finances as her spouse is investigated for embezzlement. It may lack a certain elegance in its prose ("his tongue lay inside her mouth like a giant anchovy") but it has at least started the race off.
emma.jacobs@ft.com
