Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Complicating the Serial Killer Novel : The Bystander Narrator as Genre Disrupter
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The serial killer novel has enjoyed unabated popularity since Thomas Harris’s 1988 bestseller The Silence of the Lambs prompted a publishing boom in the genre that endures today. Harris, as well as the influx of novelists who have followed in his wake, have been criticised for their gratuitous sensationalism, and for the rigid conservatism of their narrative arcs, which feature a return to order after the anarchism and disorder of the serial killer – narratives which bear little resemblance to the reality of the abject violence of serial homicide and its traumatic aftermath. This article examines the case studies of Ali Land’s novel Good Me Bad Me, and Emily Maguire’s An Isolated Incident, and identifies the way in which both writers innovate within the genre by using the bystander narrator to subvert the tropes of the detective procedural and decentre the generic focus on the monstrous figure of the serial killer, focussing the novel instead on the aftermath of the crime and its victims. The article argues such interventions by contemporary novelists in the serial killer genre offer a profound innovation that complicates the familiar narrative arc of anarchic crime and resolution in favour of a more ambiguous and realistic view of serial crime.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon New Writing vol. 16 no. 3 2019 16974304 2019 periodical issue

    'There is a TV news item playing right now about Selah Schneiter, a 10-year old who has just climbed to the summit of El Capitan. She is the youngest to have ever successfully made that climb. El Cap, as it is often called, is a 3000 ft rock formation located in the Yosemite National Park in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Even if you have absolutely no fear of heights, the idea of a 10-year old climbing El Cap is mindboggling. Selah comes from a climbing family (her parents met on an El Cap climbing trip back in 2004); but, for anyone of any age to do a climb like that (sheer granite, straight up) they need tremendous grip and finger strength, exceptional hip and shoulder flexibility, strong knee flexion – and they need a tremendous, unerring, deep-rooted amount of endurance. Summits are generally not considered to be within the reach of 10-year olds. Selah Schneiter's feat challenges our perception of what is possible.' (Graeme Harper. Editorial introduction)

    2019
    pg. 363-373
Last amended 25 Jul 2019 10:56:35
363-373 Complicating the Serial Killer Novel : The Bystander Narrator as Genre Disruptersmall AustLit logo New Writing
X