Author: Heidi Tiedemann Darroch
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Iceland Noir: Margrét Ann Thors’s First Novel
I love this book. I’ve had a lucky streak of wonderful books: fiction and nonfiction, crime and suspense but also domestic/romantic “women’s fiction,” like Kerry Clare’s new novel, Definitely Thriving. Clare has a lot of fun with the idea of a segregated women’s literature: her protagonist, Clemence, fresh out of a marriage that she blew…
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Brokenness and Resilience: The Aestheticization of Violence in Crime Fiction
Resilience Discourse In several contexts over the past few weeks, references to resilience have irritated me. My re-immersion in trauma theory for a book chapter has me thinking about who is expected to be endlessly resilient, and how this call to demonstrate strength becomes an excuse to ignore pain, abuse, and systemic inequalities. Resilience discourse…
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Children’s Crime Fiction: The Chalet School and the Right’s Embrace of The Hardy Boys, Racism and All
I’ve had a busy week of drafting applications, and one of these (completed! submitted!) required multiple short essays documenting my interest in mountain literature. I resisted citing the Chalet School novels as my earliest immersion in serial fiction in a mountain setting, but it’s hard for me to think about alpine lit without a wistful…
