I've seen this attitude before - that dark and gritty are synonomous with reality. Bullshit.
Dark and gritty do exist, but to imply that reality is all dark, gritty, selfish, greedy, and evil is just as ridiculous as thinking that reality is all sweetness and light.
People exist in all forms and all flavors.
I agree, and this is what puts me off reading this book. I'd say I've lived and moved in some pretty gritty and dark circles-- worked in prison, and as a probation officer, and in a half-way house; researched Bombay's slummy red-light district. And the one thing that shines through, is that even people in the worst of "gritty" situations can be likeable, friendly, caring, generous.
I get a bit Daily-Mail-ish when it comes to benefits scroungers. The idea of teenage girls choosing motherhood as a career option and living on taxpayers money makes me see red, and don't start on binge drinking and chavs. But I know just such a person (benefits mother, I mean, not binge drinker), and I like her. She lived in a council estate, had seven children by four fathers by the time she was thirty; all the fathers were black, and she was white. I got involved with her when I became a foster mother for her elder daughter, and I had close contact with the family. OK, she lived on benefits and never worked and smoked grass and used f-words in front of the kids. But she was a good mother, her children adored her, her house, a tiny mid-terrace, was amazingly tidy, and she tried to educate herself by reading good books. Also, when I moved house she offered to help, brought around a firend ) another benefits mother) and one of her sons, and they spent two or three days helping me carry furniture downstairs and load it in the van, and cleaned the house for me as well, for free.
Her two youngest boys are extremely intelligent, straight A students at their comprehensive, and she was very excited when I thought they might be eligible for a scholarship at one of the good independent schools. (Unfortunately it didn't work out -- but if I were to ever get a 7-figure advance part of it would go to putting those two boys through a really good school. (OK derail over, sorry -- I got a bit carried away there! I love those kids.)
All this is to say that "reality" just isn't all gloom and doom, and that's what's so great about humans. They can find goodness and hope and strength even in the worst situations, and THAT'S what I want to read about. I like stories that show that sort of thing;
that for me is honesty. I don't want to wade through the garbage heap of humanity and never see a spark of human kindness. That's not the book for me; I think it's one-sided and shallow.
Nobody's perfect, of course, not even my wife, who comes closest, but lack of perfection does not equate to nasty and vicious.
Awww! How cute! I bet she thinks you're perfect too!