CALL FOR CHAPTERS
‘From the Domestic to the Dominant: The New Face of Crime Fiction’
Edited Collection
‘From the Domestic to the Dominant: The New Face of Crime Fiction’
Edited Collection
Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn), The Silent Wife (ASA Harrison), The Girl on the
Train (Paula Hawkins), are just three recent novels that have captured the commercial
imagination and conceivably shifted the critical perception of what a
contemporary crime thriller is and should be doing in the second decade of the
21st Century. The terrain is domestic, the narrative perspective and criminal
perpetrator firmly female. However, the political is of course ever present in
relation to gender and society. The crime thriller has always been a peculiarly
modern form. Its transition to an urgent, necessary and contemporary form of
literary expression is arguable, and lies at the core of the discussion within
this collection.
Julia Crouch (Cuckoo, The Long Fall, Tarnished and Every Vow You Break)
recognised as the originator of the term ‘Domestic Noir’ stated that it ‘takes
place primarily in homes and workplaces, concerns itself largely (but not
exclusively) with the female experience.’
Domestic Noir is often concerned with crimes of an extremely intimate nature.
Renee Knight’s Disclaimer and Claire Kendal’s The Book of You, both deal with
unusually invasive forms of stalking. Christobel Kent’s The Crooked House and
Erin Kelly’s The Poison Tree both detail the horror of long-buried secrets
surfacing. Many of the novels deal explicitly with what Rebecca Whitney (The
Liar’s Chair) describes as ‘toxic marriage and its fallout’, such as Emma
Chapman’s How to be a Good Wife, and Lucie Whitehouse’s Before we Met. There
are also versions of the marriage thriller that present economically or
sexually independent women transgressing, such as Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree
Yard and Jill Alexander Essbaum’s Hausfrau.
Children and adolescents often figure in Domestic Noir as incendiary characters
such as in Emma Donoghue’s Room, Kate Hamer’s The Girl in the Red Coat, and
Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin. Adolescent girls occupy centre
stage in Megan Abbott’s reinterpretation of Lolita, The End of Everything, her
twisted take on cheerleaders, Dare Me, and mass hysteria at a high school, The
Fever. Also relevant here are Gillian Flynn’s first two novels Sharp Objects
and Dark Places, and Tana French’s The Secret Place.
Domestic Noir is a particularly crystallised version of crime fiction. These
are novels that not only toe a strong narrative line but also address the very
real issues of life, death, and how we relate to each other. As there has not
yet been a publication that addresses Domestic Noir, we welcome chapters on all
aspects of the sub-genre for a volume to be presented to a major UK or
international publisher. You may wish to submit on the following topics, though
this is by no means an exhaustive list:
- Literary antecedents of Domestic Noir (i.e. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes)
- Female perpetrators, female gangsters, and women who kill
- 21st century crime fiction and its cultural relevance
- The genesis of crime sub-genres
- Gendered and generational readings of Domestic Noir
- Crime and mental health in the 21st century
- Location, geographies, and race in Domestic Noir
- Intimate crimes (stalking, rape etc.)
- New work and domestic patterns
- Domestic Noir and the Bluebeard cycle.
- Suburban Gothic
- Small and big screen interpretations of Domestic Noir
SUBMISSION DETAILS
Abstracts of 400 – 500 words including up to five keywords should be sent to Laura Ellen Joyce (l.joyce@uea.ac.uk) or Henry Sutton (henry.sutton@uea.ac.uk) by 18 March 2016
Notification of acceptance: 22 April 2016
Full chapters of between 6000 – 8000 words are due by: 16 September 2016
Final versions are due by: 31 December 2016
