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Five Decembers Q7: Hardboiled, noir, war story, love story?
What sort of book is this? Is it a hardboiled detective story, an noir novel, a war story, or a love story? What defines those genres? What features of the book fit (or not) into these genres?
(And please, avoid the easy escape of "it's more than one genre" or "genre is irrelevant." My interest in this question comes from seeing how this book does or doesn't fit into the buckets.)
Comments
"The best definition of hard boiled I know is that of critic Eddie Duggan. In noir, the primary focus is interior: psychic imbalance leading to self-hatred, aggression, sociopathy, or a compulsion to control those with whom one shares experiences. By contrast, hard boiled 'paints a backdrop of institutionalized social corruption'".
Since we have several instances of institutionalized corruption (dirty cops, damaging sex trade laws, and wars driven by egocentric leaders) but spend almost no time with McGrady’s psyche, I think we’re in HB territory.
The war and love angles are interesting asides to help drive the protagonist, but are not the crux of the story.
I tend to agree with @Apocryphal though (as I have said elsewhere) I have little experience with some of these genres so can't comment with much confidence.
Almost all authors I know (who are mostly indie, and mostly self-published, just to clarify) will say that they regard genres as a rather artificial construct invented by the trad publishing world to simplify the writing world into easy-to-manage buckets. It can certainly be hard as an author to decide what genre(s) one's own book fits into - but this also applies in the trad world... allegedly, Asimov wrote The Caves of Steel in response to somebody who reckoned that science fiction and detective stories could not be combined.
That said, readers of particular genres do have expectations about books in terms of word length, writing style, nature of protagonist and their associates, plot structure, cover design and so on. So there is clearly something real gong on here, and it is not just an artificial dividing line in the sand.
Personally, I don't see this as a war story - there's not enough about the hardware and infrastructure of war, compared to say the two submarine stories that @clash_bowley chose a while ago. The war is a background element here which drives the allegiances and motivations of some of the characters, rather than a thing in its own right, A detective story of some kind yes. Hard-boiled or noir - don't know enough to say. Love story - hmmm, interesting one. As @Apocryphal said somewhere, Molly is a bit of an enigma as you think he's going to be important, and then she isn't. But the relationship with Sachi is a key driver of the plot and McGrady's actions, so yes it's (at least in part) a love story, even if the partner at the end is not who you thought it was going to be.
Really? I read it that he only decided to go back to Sachi once he'd run out of other things to do and was at a bit of loose end.
OK, there's a bit more to it than that. I think that episode is saying something about alienation and people being unable to connect after wildly different and profound experiences.
I agree to the extent that he had become unable to successfully reintegrate into either standard American or Hawaiian society, and so went back to the only place he knew that he might find respite. Perhaps not unlike Frodo, his success at ridding the world of a particular menace had cost him the place and lifestyle that atthe outset he thought was his.
I'd probably phrase it that it has to do with shared trauma - McGrady and Sachi had shared some deeply upsetting and terrifying moments, and neither could reconnect with anyone except each other.
In fact those three years were kind of glossed over in almost every way, which I found probably the most surprising and disappointing aspect of the book