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Trash, bang, wallop: How the bonkbuster novel came to define a generation for millions of women

Has the genre’s time really passed? David Barnett finds out – and unveils a shocking revelation in the process

Saturday 17 August 2019 11:16 BST
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‘I think bonkbusters are escapist fantasies – and I think they’re feminist because they show women being flawed and complex, and they show women wanting and dreaming’
‘I think bonkbusters are escapist fantasies – and I think they’re feminist because they show women being flawed and complex, and they show women wanting and dreaming’

With the passing of Judith Krantz in June, it’s possible that the sun has set on the kingdom of which she was one of the queens that of the bonkbuster novel.

The bonkbuster was born in the 1980s, which is appropriate; these brick-sized books celebrated what many might think of as the worst excesses of the decade conspicuous wealth; rich, powerful people untroubled by conscience or guilt; fast cars, faster planes and luxury yachts; exotic locales that were the exclusive playgrounds of the elite and entitled.

And readers lapped it up. Krantz, who died at her Los Angeles home, aged 91, sold something like 85 million copies of her 10 novels, and could arguably be said to have ushered in the age of the bonkbuster.

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