'When beautiful 25-year-old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small New South Wales town of Strathdee, the community is stunned and a full investigation gets underway as a media storm descends.
'Unwillingly thrust into the eye of that storm is Bella's beloved older sister, Chris, a barmaid at the local pub and occasional sex worker, and a woman whose apparent easygoing nature conceals hard-won wisdom and the kind of street-smart only experience can bring.
'As Chris is plunged into despair and searches for answers, reasons, explanations - anything - that could make even the smallest sense of Bella's death, her ex-husband, friends and neighbours do their best to support her. But as the days tick by with no arrest, Chris's suspicion of those around her grows.
'Also interested in Chris is May Norman, a young, self-absorbed city journalist, who is determined that Bella's murder will be the story to launch her career. But the longer May spends in Strathdee, the more she feels unable to do the job she was sent to do, yet unwilling to leave until she knows how the story ends.
'An Isolated Incident is a psychological thriller about everyday violence, the media's obsession with pretty dead girls, the grip of grief and the myth of closure, and the difficulties of knowing the difference between a ghost and a memory, between a monster and a man. ' (Publication summary)
'Emily Maguire is a Sydney-based author who has written six novels, three non-fiction books and numerous articles on feminism, culture and literature. Her early novels Taming the Beast (2004) and The Gospel According to Luke (2006) were both awarded Special Commendations in the Kathleen Mitchell Awards. Smoke in the Room (2009) and Fishing for Tigers (2012) were followed by the two more recent novels that have had the most impact: An Isolated Incident (2016) – which was shortlisted for both the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award – and Love Objects (2021). Her novels tackle uncomfortable topics such as abusive relationships, intimate partner violence and the ways in which young women are socially conditioned to be ashamed of their own sexuality. In these latter two novels, she deploys alternating perspectives to explore the multifaceted effects of often-traumatic events on her different characters. This in-depth analysis of characters’ motivations and emotional responses mitigates against any simplistic view of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.'(Publication abstract)
'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)
'Viewed through the lens of feminist criminology, how does the subgenre of domestic noir dramatise domestic violence through generic or subversive elements of craft? Drew Humphries asserts that feminist criminology has challenged, reframed and improved legal definitions and data collection regarding women and violence (as both victims and perpetrators), and that those changes have been registered more widely in the community via media both in journalistic choices and in the themes and features of literary genres (xi). Drawing on this conceptual framework, my research analyses representations of domestic violence in domestic noir novels with reference to feminist criminological theories, including gender critiques of Life Course Theory and the General Strain Theory of Deviance. This article presents a textual analysis of Emily Maguire’s An Isolated Incident (2016) as a literary crime novel with domestic noir features centring on the use of domestic violence to build narrative interest and deliver dramatic tension, while also identifying the subversion of generic elements to enable thematic consideration of intersectional feminist concerns. I demonstrate that the rise in popularity of domestic noir occurs against a backdrop of an increased culture of interest in domestic violence, arguing that domestic noir narrative strategies leverage the complexities of feminist gains in criminology and criminal justice to give voice to women’s and girls’ experiences of gendered violence.'
Source: Abstract.
'Emily Maguire is shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize for her novel An Isolated Incident. In this special Stella interview, Emily discusses the crime genre, the ways we deal with (and fail to deal with) violence against women, and her favourite Australian women writers.'(Introduction)
In her interview with Emily Maguire, Linda Morris seeks to understand the novelist's unique approach to writing An Isolated Incident. In this murder mystery the novelist inverts the classic formula of following the detectives and instead focuses on the life of the victim.
'There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s Das Capital.
'What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.
'In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.' (Introduction)
'The 2017 Miles Franklin Award winner will be announced tonight, but I’m not taking bets on who it’s likely to be. Each shortlisted novel is by a first-time nominee. Each is of satisfyingly high literary quality and very different in voice, logic, focus and story.' (Introduction)
'Emily Maguire is shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize for her novel An Isolated Incident. In this special Stella interview, Emily discusses the crime genre, the ways we deal with (and fail to deal with) violence against women, and her favourite Australian women writers.'(Introduction)
Miles Franklin Shortlist 2017
Nic Brasch
(interviewer),
2017
14751086
2017
single work
interview
podcast
'The shortlist for the 2017 Miles Franklin was announced on 18 June 2017, and this episode - featuring all five shortlisted authors - was released on 20 June 2017.
This episode features interviews with all five shortlisted authors: Emily Maguire (An Isolated Incident), Mark O'Flynn (The Last Days of Ava Langdon), Ryan O'Neill (Their Brilliant Careers), Philip Salom (Waiting) and Josephine Wilson (Extinctions).'
Source: Blurb.
