MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Gillian Flynn’s 2012 book Gone Girl transformed the literary world. However, her book didn’t really do anything that hadn’t been done before. The novel took the idea of the thriller, centered it around the stresses and conflicts of an affluent, thirty-something couple struggling with their marriage, added some secrets and, most importantly, an all-important twist and suddenly it seemed a new genre was born. Yet since then, scores of books—almost all with the word “girl” in the title—have flooded the market, often dubbed as “the next Gone Girl.” The phrase itself has taken on its own meaning: to be a “gone girl” now carries significant implications. This type of bedroom thriller, or “domestic noir,” raises questions about the role of women, both in fiction and in real-life. While these texts might be considered “fluff” or “beach reads,” such a dismissal is a mistake and one that reinforces the patriarchal construct that continues to define worth based on a limited view of the world. Easily dismissed genres that have traditionally targeted a female readership (and that are often written by female writers) are also the genres that reflect the realities and anxieties of women in the world. Like fairy tales or romance or gothic novels, which are all consistently culturally marginalized and derided, the domestic noir does something that should not be so easily disregarded: it provides a window into what it means to be a woman in the 21st century and, as Maria Tartar says of fairy tales, develops “maps for coping with personal anxieties, family conflicts, social frictions, and the myriad frustrations of everyday life” (The Classic Fairy Tales xi). This paper aims to examine the current domestic noir novel and specifically what it means to be a gone girl in today’s world.