by Virginia Trench
And readers are here for it
Women are angry. Of course we are — it’s been a rough few years.
The #MeToo movement, enduring wage gap, reelection of a sex criminal as President of the United States, overturning of Roe v. Wade, and gender disparities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered urgent feminist conversations. And in an industry-changing case of art imitating life, the thriller genre is on fire with stories that don’t just touch on feminist issues: often, they’re the engine that drives the story.
This change is long overdue. For far too long, women in this genre appeared to have two approved roles in this genre: victim or the sidekick/ love interest of the brilliant (male) detective. But in the last decade, a new type of thriller, one centered on women’s experiences, has transformed publishing. Finally, popular fiction is flush with stories in which women take control of the narrative and female rage has a platform that’s influencing more than the best-seller list.
Record-breaking titles like The Girl on the Train didn’t just sell millions of copies and inspire box office successes: they changed the role women play in popular fiction. This shift has given voice to vital, all-too real issues that affect modern women. More than ever before, thrillers have become an outlet for furious, razor-sharp social commentary. And readers, publishers, and authors are here for it—with good reason.
Readers are challenged to believe women
Far too many of us know what it’s like to not be taken seriously or to have our concerns dismissed. It happens at the doctor’s office. It happens in the highest offices of government. It happens when we report assault to the police.
Time and time again, women get the “unreliable narrator” treatment— no matter how credible we are. Thrillers like The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Luckiest Girl Alive put readers on the protagonist’s side as the other characters in the story find every reason under the sun to discredit them. We want to scream she’s telling the truth! Listen to what she has to say! And, eventually, we have to ask… why does no one believe her? Questions like these are as powerful in fiction as they are essential in the real world.
Women don’t have to behave
The “antihero” trope has long been a boys’ club for the likes of Walter White and Don Draper. You know the one, that character you can’t help but root for despite their repugnant behavior — behavior we’re more likely to tolerate from men. It’s no secret that we expect better from women in general and mothers in particular. Often, our worth is tied directly to our goodness. And this makes complicated, compulsively readable fictional women like Gillian Flynn’s Amy Dunne not just a breath of fresh air, but a compelling means of exposing double standards and sexist attitudes.
Plots upend problematic power dynamics
Revenge is sweet — especially in a killer character arc. And in contemporary thrillers, the real villain often transcends a single character. Best-sellers like The Other Black Girl and Yellowface tackle issues of racism, particularly in the workplace (tellingly – it’s publishing in both cases). In other popular novels, it’s the patriarchy on the chopping block. In the likes of The Whisper Network and The Herd, characters must confront sexist ideas and behaviors to uncover the truth behind the crime at the core of the story. As such, readers root for the protagonist to triumph not just for their own sake, but for the satisfaction of seeing historical power imbalances turned upside down.
The rose-colored glasses come off of marriage & motherhood
Increasingly, mothers and wives are saying the quiet part out loud: this is actually really, really hard. And the double standards are bullsh*t. Frustration about the unequal division of domestic labor isn’t just gathering steam on social media, it’s popping up all over fiction. Despite the extremes of the thriller genre, thousands of readers are resonating with the struggles of motherhood depicted in Cutting Teeth and The Push, among other recent releases.
The satire of A Simple Favor and You Will Never Be Me strikes a chord with anyone who (like me) can’t help but roll their eyes at the white-knuckled, curated perfection of “momfluencers”. When it comes to the mental load in marriage, novels like in The Husbands expose enduring gender disparities that are all-too familiar to so many of us. The pressure to be perfect —endlessly patient, ageless, and self-sacrificing — is real, and it has many readers turning pages to find out just how far it can push characters that mirror our own experiences.
Fiction, particularly in this genre, gives space for visceral what if questions that explore the darker side of human nature. What if the victims of a male predator took revenge? What if women stopped being good?
What if we finally snapped? Personally, I want to find out.
Don’t you?
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