My first novel, Good as Gone, alternates between two women who are
having trouble playing the roles required of them in one of the most fraught
relationships there is: mother and daughter. Anna is a college professor so
mired in guilt and rage over the kidnapping of her 13-year-old daughter Julie
that she has neglected her relationships with her husband and younger daughter
Jane; the role of mother has caused her so much pain that she has all but
abdicated it entirely. When Julie shows up again eight years later,
malnourished and barely recognisable, Anna’s ambivalence about motherhood is
harder to banish than it should be; she finds herself doubting Julie’s account
of where she’s been for the past eight years, and eventually even her identity.
As alternating chapters delve into Julie’s past, we begin to see just how
justified those doubts are—and how hard it is for the woman who calls herself
Julie to play the role of Anna’s daughter.
When I set out to write about Anna and Julie, I didn’t know I was
writing a domestic thriller, but the genre soon drew me in. Domestic thrillers
cast doubt, not just on individual women’s roles, but on the fantasy that if
women just played their roles correctly, everything would be okay, and home
would be a safe and pleasant refuge from the big, scary world. Instead,
domestic thrillers paint the traditional woman’s domain of the family household
as dark, full of secrets, and potentially threatening. This is not a stretch
for women; in reality, female murder victims are overwhelmingly killed by their
husbands and lovers, so a genre whose central thesis is that the most intimate
relationships are the most dangerous doesn’t seem particularly far-fetched.
After all, who really feels that they know, or are known perfectly
by, their family? Intimacy can obscure far more than it reveals about a person.
Most parents have trouble seeing their children as adults, and most children
prefer to think their parents had no life before they existed. In reality,
these fictions and projections can feel either comforting or restrictive—but in
domestic thrillers, they also function as the perfect disguise for a more
complex set of motives.
Of course, in Good as Gone, it is Julie’s identity that is in
question, but as I wrote, I was just as interested in Anna’s identity as a
mother. Is Anna a monster for being unable to embrace her long-lost
daughter—even with good reason—or for distancing herself from her younger
daughter Jane in order to protect herself? Is she a monster for hiding her suspicions
from her husband instead of sharing them? I certainly don’t think so, but I’m
always fascinated by readers who despise her for these traits. Just as Julie (or
not-Julie, as the case may be) makes a series of ruthless decisions in order to
survive a harsh world, I see Anna as having made her own ruthless decisions in
order to survive a home that has been revealed as a dark and dangerous place.
As Anna says near the book’s opening, “the worst has already happened”; having
once seen through the veil to the other side, Anna can’t make herself believe in
the domestic fantasy anymore.
Is Anna a terrible mother, or a rational woman surviving a terrible
world? Is Julie a heartless imposter, or a traumatised young woman who does
what she must to survive? Domestic thrillers allow us to pose these questions
in the most extreme ways. At their best, they show the false opposition between
badly and well-behaved women, revealing the complicated humans beneath the
roles. I’ve always struggled with that opposition within myself; now, about
two-thirds of the way through my first pregnancy, I can’t help but wonder what
kind of mother I’ll make, whether I’ll make the grade. Badly behaved? Well
behaved? Probably just human.
Amy Gentry’s Good as Gone is out now (HQ, £7.99)
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Amy Gentry’s Good as Gone is out now (HQ, £7.99)
