Sara Paretsky Detective Fiction As Trauma Literature |
|
| Author:
| Hamilton, Cynthia |
| Series title: | Contemporary American and Canadian Writers Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-1-5261-5604-4 |
| Publication Date: | Jun 2021 |
| Publisher: | Manchester University Press
|
| Book Format: | Paperback |
| List Price: | USD $30.95 |
Book Description:
|
This is the first book-length study of Sara Paretsky's detective fiction.
Sara Paretsky is known for her influential V.I. Warshawski series, which transformed the masculine hard-boiled detective formula into a vehicle for feminist values. But Paretsky does more than this. Her novels also illustrate the extent to which detective fiction acts as a literature of trauma, allowing Paretsky to address the politics of agency in ways that go beyond the personal, for...
More Description
This is the first book-length study of Sara Paretsky's detective fiction.
Sara Paretsky is known for her influential V.I. Warshawski series, which transformed the masculine hard-boiled detective formula into a vehicle for feminist values. But Paretsky does more than this. Her novels also illustrate the extent to which detective fiction acts as a literature of trauma, allowing Paretsky to address the politics of agency in ways that go beyond the personal, for trauma always has a social and a political dimension. Paretsky's work also exploits the way detective fiction mirrors the writing of history. Here, Paretsky uses the form to expose the partiality of historical accounts - whether they be personal, institutional, or national - that authorise 'forgetting' of a particularly insidious kind. Significantly, all these issues are explored within the framework of the traditional hard-boiled detective novel. As a result, Paretsky's achievement forces us to acknowledge the deeply subversive potential of detective fiction.