Feeling a little too old for ``chick lit'' as churned out by Kathy Lette, I did not expect to like her latest book, To Love, Honour and Betray (Till Divorce Us Do Part), but I read it nevertheless.

Luckily the main characters had been updated from chickens to chooks so the overweight dumped wife getting her life together while raising a delinquent teen plus a younger child about to become a delinquent teen did not feel like a total stranger.

There was even a rugged 50-year-old male with a broken nose as romantic interest. (We won't mention the toy boy.)

The book is full of Lette one-liners such as: a bad marriage creeps up on you like underwear; low self esteem is hereditary - you get it from your kids; a child is for life and not just for Christmas; could teenagers be God's punishment for having sex in the first place; what to do when you fall in love (wipe it off your shoes before you walk it all over the carpet); and the perfect marriage is like an orgasm - many of them are faked.

Lette says she writes the sort of books she would have liked to have read when she was going through something - and that at her age, 49, many of her friends

are experiencing divorce. (I can hardly wait for the books she'll write on heart attack, dementia and nursing home sex.)

She also says that she does most of her research over cappuccinos with girlfriends _ which is how women have resolved their problems forever.

Whether it's over a martini at a cocktail bar or a beer in the back yard, the script seems to be the same when talking about relationship breakdown. It is always a woman's fault - either the other woman because she is evil or yourself because you've let yourself get too fat and boring.