A Slow Fire Burning

The domestic noir refers to a subgenre of crime fiction/mystery characterized by a focus on the experience of female characters, personal relationships (especially marriage), and the presence of secrets or the threat of violence within the private, domestic space of the home. Books in the domestic noir genre have been especially popular in the 2010s and 2020s, which represents a growing interest in stories from women’s perspectives. The genre tends to provide multiple and sometimes conflicting points of view, as well as perspectives from unreliable narrators. Given its frequent attention to heterosexual marriages, the genre allows writers to explore themes of gender, power, betrayal, and secrecy. Many authors writing in the genre are women (notable examples include Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty, and Sally Hepworth). A Slow Fire Burning possesses many characteristics associated with the domestic noir genre but also uses metafictional techniques to critique and poke fun at the conventions of the genre.

The term “domestic noir” was first used in film criticism and was popularized in the context of fiction by the novelist Julia Crouch in 2013. The publication of Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl in 2012 dramatically increased the visibility and popularity of the genre. Gone Girl was extremely commercially successful, and also generally critically well-received; it cemented some of the tropes associated with the domestic noir genre, including unreliable narrators, gaps between the appearance and reality of a seemingly happy domestic life, and the possibility of women actively participating in violent and criminal activity. Hawkins’s The Girl on The Train was another significant success in the genre. Both Gone Girl and The Girl on The Train were adapted into successful films, further solidifying the popularity of the domestic noir genre. Other titles within the genre, such as Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, have been adapted for television rather than film.

The domestic noir genre can be traced to earlier psychological thrillers, such as the novels of Patricia Highsmith, the novels and stories of Shirley Jackson, and the film noir and murder mystery genres. With its focus on revealing dark secrets that can lurk within seemingly peaceful domestic settings, domestic noir can also be seen as a contemporary updating of the “sensation novels” that were popular in Victorian Britain in the1860s and 1870s. These novels (including The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon) adapted tropes typically associated with the Gothic genre, such as secrets, mysterious deaths, and sinister male presences but shocked and thrilled audiences by locating these events in contemporary British households. The possibility that secrets such as bigamy, incest, and secret identities could lurk in the safe haven of the family home set the stage for the dark revelations of domestic noir. The domestic noir genre has become so popular that it has even been the subject of satire, notably the television program The Woman in The House Across the Street From the Girl in The Window.