Genre Overlap or Plagiarism?

by Rachel Deahl, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/2/2006

As if Kaavya Viswanathan hasn't been getting slammed enough in the press, the New York Times today added to the skewering by pointing out yet another novel the young author may have pulled from for her debut, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. In a piece by Dinitia Smith and Motoko Rich, who've been covering the scandal for the paper, passages from Sophie Kinsella's Can You Keep a Secret? are compared against some from Opal Mehta. Though the writers cite that the plagiarism here, if it is indeed that, isn't as egregious as the initial "borrowing" Viswanathan did that got this story started—from Megan McCafferty's books Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings—they do detail some minor plot similarities between the books.

Whether this is a case of genre similarities—do chick lit writers take the 'tall, dark and handsome' type literally?—or of more plagiarism, remains to be seen; no one involved is talking. Little, Brown has not elaborated on whether it will be reissuing Opal and Random House—which in addition to publishing McCafferty also oversees Dial, the imprint that released Can You Keep a Secret?—spokesman Stuart Applebaum told PW that neither it, nor the authors involved have any further comment on the affair.