Domestic Noir with Lisa Jewell and Louise Candlish

If you enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies or Louise Doughty’s recent Platform Seven, then you are already a fan of domestic noir. This sub-genre of crime fiction was defined by the writer Julia Crouch as, rather thrillingly, having “as its base a broadly feminist view that the domestic sphere is a challenging and sometimes dangerous prospect for its inhabitants”. Novels in this category usually take place in the home and workplaces and they often focus on the female experience.

I’ll be discussing domestic noir with Lisa Jewell and Louise Candlish, alongside their brilliant new novels The Family Upstairs and Those People, over wine at Dulwich Books on Tuesday 1st October from 7pm. Tickets are still available via the link below. Join us!

Platform Seven by Louise Doughty

Platform Seven, Louise Doughty’s ninth novel, begins with the suicide of a man who throws himself under a train at 4am at Peterborough Station. He is observed by the narrator — the ghost of a woman called Lisa Evans, who died in similar circumstances 18 months before.

Those of us who baulk at being told a story by a ghost can be reassured that Doughty fully inhabits the character of this insecure thirtysomething teacher. The mystery over Lisa’s death is the engine that powers the plot.

Though Lisa is not a particularly remarkable person, she is credible and her plight moving. Doughty depicts her emotionally abusive relationship with her toxic boyfriend with skill and empathy. She evokes a textbook case of “gaslighting”, without ever using the buzzword (which refers to the way women are made to doubt their sanity by manipulative partners).