Here at High Tensile,we like books that get under the skin.

From tales that elicit direct terror, to those that tap into more subtle fears and anxieties - you know, the kind of prolonged dread that tends to stick around long after you’ve devoured the last page. Put simply, if it sends the mind into overdrive, gets the heart racing, or the hairs bristling, then it’s likely to pique our interest. But as you’ve probably worked out by now, there’s nothing we enjoy reading more than a decent psychological thriller. With its mix of suspense, drama, action and paranoia, this is a sub-genre with broad appeal, offering writers plenty of scope in terms of character and plot.

 

There’s also the notion that psychological thrillers – which often explore the thoughts, perceptions and distortions of its central characters – occupy a sort of middle-ground between literary fiction and genre fiction. The guilty pleasure you don’t have to hide inside the cover of another book. Altogether, it’s a winning formula. This is reflected in the slew of new titles that appear regularly in bookstores, supermarkets and the all-pervasive AdChoices on social media platforms. Which brings us to the issue of the title itself. And more specifically, the use of the term ‘girl’ in so many of these titles.

 

There are literally dozens to choose from, but here are a few of the more popular ones you might already be familiar with: Gone Girl (2012), The Hanging Girl (2014), The Girl on the Train (2015), Dead Girl Walking (2015), Luckiest Girl Alive (2015). The list goes on, but I’m sure you get the picture. It’s almost become a sub-genre within a sub-genre. Or simply an unoriginal marketing ploy, depending on your point of view. Critics have also argued that the use – or overuse - of the word girl is problematic in a couple of ways.

 

Firstly, in the majority of the books the central character is not a child at all but a full-fledged woman. Take Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, for instance, where the female protagonist is in her mid-thirties. It’s perhaps not surprising then that detractors feel the use of the term ‘girl’ is infantilising. Secondly, critics have also suggested that this trend denies women any autonomous subjectivity. Instead, these characters are constructed through the lens of male fantasy. Again, Amy’s iconic ‘cool girl’ speech from Gone Girl – the full monologue can be read here - shows how women are expected to conform to a male notion of femininity. But the book, and indeed the subsequent film, upend this idea by presenting a female character who understands how to play the game, but is just no longer willing to participate. Thrillers like Gone Girl represent escapist fantasies; women kicking back against the men who attempt to manipulate and control them.

 

In The Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins – a book that is frequently compared to Flynn’s novel - this realisation unravels slowly, but with equally dramatic results. The female protagonist, Rachel, is a 32-year-old alcoholic who again belies the ‘girl’ tag. However, it’s the prolonged gaslighting at the hands of her ex-husband, Tom, that still warrants its use. And this is really the point. If you read the title of these books in isolation, the infantilisation argument seems valid enough. But in most cases, the titles work in tandem with the overarching themes, by creating opposition. This, in turn, provides a tension that interrogates or calls-out patriarchy rather than reinforcing it.

 

It’s a trope that can be traced back to the hugely successful Millennium series, originally penned by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Published posthumously in 2005, the first of these novels – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – introduced a female character who not only exposes extreme misogyny, but also spawned a craze of similarly titled thrillers. The female protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, is a 23-year-old computer hacker who was declared incompetent as a child and remains under the supervision of a legal guardian – a man she trusts and cares for. When he dies unexpectedly, the courts appoint her a new guardian who proceeds to rape and abuse her repeatedly. Lisbeth, one of the most resourceful and intuitive characters you’re ever likely to stumble across, exacts revenge – taking steps to ensure that she is never placed in a similar position again. In Larsson’s books, it’s the complex Swedish legal system that defines Lisbeth as a girl and not a woman, but it could be argued that the system itself is subject to the same patriarchal mechanism. The dynamic between the title and the content is perhaps more obvious than in the host of novels it appears to have influenced, but the principle remains the same. Lisbeth – albeit for different reasons - comes to the same realisation as Amy in Gone Girl or Rachel in Girl on a Train. In order to survive, being the ‘girl’ that society expects her to be is no longer an option. It’s an effective paradox – or at least it was before it became so popular. By using the term ‘girl’, writers are in danger of giving the game away before the reader has finished the first page. For me, the problem is not that it infantilises women, quite the opposite.

 

But in a genre that thrives on twists and turns, it sometimes seems a little tired and predictable.