Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:01:18.382Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 14 - Killers, Lovers, and Teens: Contemporary Genre Fiction

from Part Three - Forms and Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Paige Reynolds
Affiliation:
College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

The display shelves of Irish bookstores, while showcasing the occasional Yeats collection or Joyce novel, are filled largely with crime fiction, romance novels, and young adult (YA) books. This chapter surveys the status of the crime novel in Ireland, a topic that has drawn established “highbrow” writers such as John Banville, who writes successful crime novels under the pseudonym of Benjamin Bratton, as well as other talented scribes including Tana French. This chapter also examines the popular romance, or “chick lit” – a genre dominated by Irish women writers since the days of Rosa Mulholland – and its success in work by Marian Keyes, Cecelia Ahern, and Sarah Harte. It also attends to the growing influence of children’s and young adult fiction, particularly focusing on the boom in YA fiction, led by writers such as Louise O’Neill. What do these books, and their popularity, tell us about contemporary Ireland? Are these forms of genre fiction inherently conservative?

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Irish Studies , pp. 244 - 258
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×