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1 results

  • Chapter 14 - Killers, Lovers, and Teens: Contemporary Genre Fiction

  • from Part Three - Forms and Practices
  • Edited by Paige Reynolds, College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The New Irish Studies
    Published online:
    18 September 2020
    Print publication:
    24 September 2020, pp 244-258

  • Summary

    The display shelves of Irish bookstores, while showcasing the occasional Yeats collection or Joyce novel, are filled largely with crime fiction, romance novels, and young adult (YA) books. This chapter surveys the status of the crime novel in Ireland, a topic that has drawn established “highbrow” writers such as John Banville, who writes successful crime novels under the pseudonym of Benjamin Bratton, as well as other talented scribes including Tana French. This chapter also examines the popular romance, or “chick lit” – a genre dominated by Irish women writers since the days of Rosa Mulholland – and its success in work by Marian Keyes, Cecelia Ahern, and Sarah Harte. It also attends to the growing influence of children’s and young adult fiction, particularly focusing on the boom in YA fiction, led by writers such as Louise O’Neill. What do these books, and their popularity, tell us about contemporary Ireland? Are these forms of genre fiction inherently conservative?