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"As her devotees already know, French doesn’t write genre books or thrillers. She writes full-bodied novels in which crimes happen to have been committed." This shit again? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/books/review/tana-french-the-searcher.html?smid=tw-share
The book is lovely, by the way. You can read my review in the L.A. Times next week, I think. I promise I do not shit on genre fiction.
For the thousandth time, genre is about subject matter, not quality. If you write a full-bodied novel in which crimes happen to have been committed, congratulations, you wrote a good crime novel!
And by the way, I understand that some novels are more in-between, with less focus on mystery, etc. etc., but like, Tana French's books are firmly in the genre mold. The Dublin Murder Squad books are police procedurals. Their excellence doesn't make them less about crime.
I have a feeling I'm gonna be 90 and pantsless in some nursing home, screaming GENRE IS ABOUT SUBJECT MATTER at my snobby college-age grandkids, who won't read my books because they have murder in them.
Imagine if every six months, the New York Times published a profile that started, "She happens to be female, but she's not like other women." That's how stupid this looks. We've been over it so many times, I'm amazed that it keeps coming up.
