53 pages • 1 hour read
Karin SlaughterThe Good Daughter
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: The Works of Karin Slaughter
Karin Slaughter, the author of over 20 works of crime fiction, is known for her vivid characterizations and extensive portrayal of police and justice procedures in her novels. Slaughter's novels highlight mature and serious themes such as the psychological impact of crime and violence on individuals and their relationships. The author often uses detailed and graphic descriptions of crime to illustrate these complex, dark themes. For instance, in The Good Daughter, the shooting that kills Gamma is presented in precise, visceral detail, to enable readers to picture its horror and impact on Gamma's children, witnessing their mother's death. Pretty Girls, 2015, centered around a missing sister, contains frank descriptions of violent pornography. Slaughter depicts violence unflinchingly in her texts to highlight the real-life threat of gender-based crimes against women.
Slaughter has spoken about the importance of framing gender-based violence from the perspective of women (Conroy, Catherine. “Karin Slaughter: ‘I have a lot of readers who probably are Trump supporters.’” The Irish Times, 19 Jun. 2021). As in The Good Daughter, her novels examine how violence negatively affects women’s emotional lives and their family dynamics in the long term. In the novel, Sam and Charlie's varying experiences of trauma and coping strategies affect their relationships with their parents and with each other. Slaughter creates complex characters who are morally flawed and particularly examines how the actions and decisions of men disproportionately impact the women around them: Rusty strives for justice for everyone, but paternalistically avoids justice for his daughter; Mason and Zach are criminals who treat Rusty’s wife and daughters as collateral in their feud against him; Doug Pinkerton is an abusive husband and sexual predator. The dramatic and emotional interest of the novel rests on how the novel’s women respond to—and seek to overcome—these gendered challenges.
Genre Context: Crime Fiction
The Good Daughter is in the crime fiction genre, also drawing on elements of the family drama and the suspense thriller. Following the conventions of crime fiction, the novel details violence and its aftermath, as well as the police and legal procedure of solving the crime. The novel’s suspense and twists, especially the delayed revelations of the final scenes, are characteristic of the genre. Genre devices such as shifting perspectives, hidden truths, red herrings, tense courtroom procedures, and unreliable witnesses—in the form of both Charlie and Kelly—give the plot its mystery and tension. Character types, such as harsh cops, punitive district attorneys, liberal lawyers (Rusty and Sam), and criminals, and victims further reinforce genre-based conventions.
At the same time, the novel deviates from genre staples and subverts some expectations. For instance, it uses the scaffolding of a crime thriller to examine more intimate family dynamics between Sam, Charlie, and Rusty. The emotional focus and female-survivor perspective are unusual in the established crime genre. While the two big questions ostensibly powering the plot are the identity of the “good daughter”, and the innocence of Kelly Wilson, the emotional and dramatic force of the plot is found in the relationship between the Quinn sisters and the possibility of their reconciliation. Slaughter also deviates from generic expectations through the unusual pacing of her narrative revelations, opening with the novel’s main criminal-traumatic event and allowing the reader to know the perpetrators’ identities from Interlude 1. Slaughter's method ensures that the narrative focuses more on the effect of violence on Sam and Charlie, rather than on the usual “whodunnit” focus of crime procedurals. The second crime, the school shooting, is also an exploration of culpability and the cause-and-effect of societal power imbalances. Thus, the novel lives up to audience expectations as a crime thriller, while also providing enhanced psychological and social realism as a critique of contemporary justice in the US.
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