The Nightmare Tropes of Three Women Writers

Features “I think, for the first time since the Civil Rights movement, we as Americans are completely at a loss. And I think that’s why Baldwin has resurged, because Baldwin is the prophet of the human. What does it mean to be human?” – Chris Abani Read the full interview with Abani on page 18. James Baldwin in front of a statue of Shakespeare at the Albert Memorial in London. Photo by Allan Warren/Wikimedia WORLDLIT.ORG 9 T he conventional wisdom in publishing for many years has been that women read and men don’t. Market research shows that men, on the whole, read for work, concentrating on nonfiction, whereas women read more for pleasure, leading, for example, to the Harlequin publishing juggernaut. In one survey, every genre but one was read by more women than men. It was surprising to see that this was true for what we see as testosterone-infused genres like detective novels, thrillers, and even westerns. The sole male bastion was science fiction, but it was a weak one, its audience split at 51 percent male to 49 percent female. Novels presumed to be oriented toward women are therefore always particularly appetizing to publishers, and tropes directed toward women are prime ingredients in The Nightmare Tropes of Three Women Writers Leïla Slimani, Karen Dionne, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir by J. Madison Davis crime & mystery Contrary to what we might prefer, the popularity of most novels rarely depends on the quality of the writing, and those rare books that stay in our memories for the rest of our lives often exploit the same tropes that dozens of clumsily written, best-selling potboilers do. 10 WLT JULY–AUGUST 2018 most fiction. By “tropes” here, I mean not the figures of speech but rather repeating motifs of plot, conflict, and situation. A novelist sets up a particular situation that is compelling and disturbing. The book becomes a success and others begin to exploit the fictional situation in the same way that musicians do their themes and variations. Consider the following three women novelists from different nations who are currently earning particular notice in crime fiction. Each of them bases her books on tropes that are mainstays of popular literature—as most novelists do. Contrary to what we might prefer, the popularity of most novels rarely depends on the quality of the writing, and those rare books that stay in our memories for the rest of our lives often exploit the same tropes that dozens of clumsily written, best-selling potboilers do. A huge best-seller in Europe and recently translated from the original French, Leïla Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny was the subject of a recent blog review on the World Literature Today website. The original title was Chanson douce, which was rendered as Lullaby in the British publication. It won the Prix Goncourt, putting Slimani, the first Goncourt winner born in Morocco, in the select literary company of Pierre Lemaitre, Michel Houellebecq, Marguerite Duras, Simone de Beauvoir, and even Marcel Proust. A journalist, Slimani wrote only one previous novel, Dans le jardin de l’ogre (In the garden of the ogre), the story of a woman’s decline due to her sexual addiction. Slimani has said the original idea came from the sensational news story of the accused rapist and politician Dominique StraussKahn . In a similar way, Chanson douce got its beginning from the horrific story of the Krim murders in Manhattan. Two children, ages six and two, were stabbed to death in the bathtub by their nanny, who also wounded herself. Judged mentally competent, she was convicted of murder in April 2018. There are many resemblances between Slimani’s novel and the details of the crime, although she transplants it to France—the economic status of the victim’s parents, for example, and the immigrant status of the nanny. The presence of these elements adds political and social weight to what could be just another horror story, giving the reader the sense that the novel has more meaning than it would have without it. Yet it is clear that the visceral resonance of the book is not really its socioeconomic implications. The

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