When Genres Are Happy Together

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The 1935 movie version of the She novel.

Some literature offers readers content spanning at least two genres. Bonus!

It’s a blend that can make fiction richer and more interesting. Perhaps more challenging, too, but potentially very satisfying. All requiring some serious authorial skill and imagination, obviously. I’ll give some examples of this approach via multi-genre novels I’ve read.

My most recent experience was with Val McDermid’s The Skeleton Road, which combines a compelling murder mystery with well-researched historical fiction about the oft-brutal Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

Another example is Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, a novel that mixes a feminist/social-justice perspective with science fiction. Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin also unites a realistic story with sci-fi, and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred melds an anti-racism theme with time travel.

H. Rider Haggard’s novel She is squarely in the adventure genre yet contains a major fantasy element: Title character Ayesha is more than 2,000 years old — perhaps a bit longer than the usual human life span. 🙂

Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour straddles the fantasy and supernatural horror genres.

Fiction that includes ghosts usually has those ghosts interacting in some way with the real world, making for two genres of a sort. Among the novels in this realm are Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Jorge Amado’s Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, and Elin Hilderbrand’s The Hotel Nantucket, to name a few.

Museum objects and exhibits come alive in Gore Vidal’s The Smithsonian Institution and Christine Coulson’s Metropolitan Stories — even as life is also depicted normally. So, fantasy and realism co-exist.

Then there are books that genre-blend in a different way; for instance, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire is part-novel and part-poem, while J.K. Rowling’s The Ink Black Heart mixes traditional prose with a blitz of chat conversations. Actually, chat conversations are not exactly a literary genre. 🙂

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “The driver of that ‘On the Road’ car must be Jack Kerouac.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — featuring a pre-election theme and more — is here.

179 thoughts on “When Genres Are Happy Together”

  3. Dave, I’m much more socially conservative than almost all the commenters on your blog so I will try to explain why I think Trump won, Biden is very unpopular this year and when the incumbent is this unpopular his party always loses. Unlike successful Democratic presidential candidates such as Bill Clinton and Obama, Harris was unable to gain much support from swing voters. Her views on transgenderism are much more liberal than most Americans and legalizing marijuana is unpopular in the Rust Belt States where drug addiction is a serious social problem. Add to this inflation, uncontrolled illegal immigration and two major wars that started during the Biden Administration (even though he was probably not responsible for them) this creates a perfect storm. However I think that if the economy goes south in the next four years the Republicans will be defeated (Trump won’t be eligible to run again and most MAGA candidates who are NOT Trump have done poorly in the last few years).

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    • Thank you for the comment, Tony. You certainly offered some plausible reasons for why Trump won and Harris lost; I agree more with some of those reasons than others. I think I’ll discuss the election in some way, shape, or form in my November 10 post this Sunday, so in a way I’ll be responding more to your comment then. 🙂

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  4. How interesting — I’ve never considered genre blending before. I see what you mean, it does add a multilayered quality to the book, although I can’t think of any examples of my own off the top of my head! 🤔 You’ve got me pondering now (it’ll bother me all day trying to think of my own example lol!)

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  5. Hi Dave,

    I’m not even going to pretend my comment has anything to do with the topic. I think it’s the middle of the night over there? I just got home from work and turned on the news and turned it right off again. On the plus side, at least he’ll never lose another one. Coz we all know after the 2025 riots he would have just done it all again three years later. It’s not much of a silver lining, but I’ll take anything that makes me feel even a tiny bit better.

    Susan

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    • Thank you, Susan. Yes, the Trump win is absolutely devastating. A far-right liar, felon, divider, sexual predator, misogynist, racist, homophobe, etc., is going back to the White House. The United States is a VERY sick country, or about half of it is. 😦

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  6. Pingback: Roberta Writes – Book review: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott #readingcommunity – Patty's Worlds

  7. Joyce commented that too many writers are blocked by their preferred writing style and genre to such degree that it limits their ability to touch upon certain subjects. He was of the opinion that a the subject should define the writing style and genre and not vice versa.

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    • Thank you, Shaharee! Those were wise words from James Joyce. Sometimes, limits can spark a certain kind of creativity (such as when comic strip cartoonists skillfully work within the confines of just a few panels) but busting through limits can lead to really good content by novelists.

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  8. Pingback: Roberta Writes – Book review: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott #readingcommunity

  9. What about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell? So many genres in that book and also various forms: diary, epistolary, narrative, interview, and ranging over a vast time-period. Six different voices; six different stories which are all linked, through time and space in a variety of subtle ways. Interesting. But I preferred one of his other books – Slade House (fantasy/horror/sci-fi).

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  11. I’m a little off-topic here, Dave, but I thought I’d mention Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, which I love. They are fantasy, but they are also brilliant, laugh-out-loud satire. On top of that, many of them, particularly the set of books within the series that feature Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch, are full of extremely astute commentary on current-day problems, including racism, sexism, religious fanaticism, and nationalism. All disguised by humor!

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  12. Honestly, I have only watched the TV series, but I think Outlander novel series by Diana Gabaldon would count.

    The YA Twilight stories (Stephenie Meyer)that mixes today with a 117 year old vampire seems in line.

    A Ghost and His Gold by Roberta Eaton Cheadle is definitely a mixed genre. Excellent historical research into fiction combined with a today story plus paranormal activity may cross into 3 genres.

    “On the Road“

    🫰🏽snap 🫰🏽snap 🫰🏽snap

    Misty is one Hep Cat! Yes, the term hep cat or hepcat was started by Cat Cattoway in the late 1930’s, but was used by the Beat Generation and is not forgotten today.

    I think hep may have become hip by the time hippies arrived. Misty could answer that, being the resident meowthority on such matters. 😼

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  15. As soon as I started reading this great post, Dave, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 came to mind. A mix of historical fiction and science fiction and a few broken rules along the way.

    I don’t mix genres on purpose in my books, but I often find myself unable to stick to the formula for one genre as the story evolves. I just go with the flow until it comes time to pick a category in Amazon. Then the stress builds.

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  16. Excellent post, Dave! I can think of several current bestsellers that mix genres. John Truby’s book, The Anatomy of Genre, has much to say about these mashups. My takeaway: know the key scenes and convention of the ones you want to mix, and then use the structure to weave them together into a meaningful story. We see this often as the main plot and subplots, using the scene’s primary character controlling the point of view to make it clear to readers through which lens they’re filtering the thoughts, choices, dialogue, and actions. My favorites on Amazon are often ‘categorized’ as thrillers, but they’re a mix of genres (e.g., 50% thriller, 30% mystery, and 20% romance). Fun reads!

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    • Thank you, Esther! “Watership Down” (which I read ages ago 🙂 ) is a great mention! Definitely a cross-genre novel.

      Very sorry about the rabbits. 😦 We still have some occasionally visiting my garden-apartment complex.

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  18. Good morning Dave, and many thanks for your interesting question! After having read your post “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus came to my mind because in that book we have on the one hand the very brilliant scientist Elisabeth Zott, who worked in a man dominated research laboratory and on the other a pregnant woman who got sacked because of this and we see also how important human relationship may be or become.

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  19. The book that immediately came to mind is Mark Smith’s The Death of the Detective. It’s a blend of noir detective genre and literary postmodernism something or other. I read it because I was taking a fiction workshop from Smith at the time. I’ll stick with Raymond Chandler, thank you very much.

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  21. \

    As far as ghosts interacting with humans, if the book is funny, romantic, or even a wee bit historical all the better. Here’s a few that come to mind: Thorne Smith’s Topper, Noel Coward’s play Blythe Spirit, R.A. Dick’s (and/or Josephine Leslie) The Ghost And Mrs. Muir. Then those of the time bending/sci fi genre such as Richard Matheson’s Somewhere In Time, Lisa Grunwald’s Time After Time and Time After Time by Karl Alexander. Nice theme Dave. I need to watch a few of the movies based on the above books rather than the upcoming election results. Yikes, I’m on pins and needles. Thanks, Susi

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  22. She Who Must Be Obeyed!

    There is an additional genre-mixing going on at She‘s front end–

    1) a mocked-up illustration, but typical for its time, of an ‘ancient’ pot sherd with scholarly description, as if the tale to be read is real, and

    2)the dedication to Andrew Lang.

    “Andrew Lang FBA (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology.

    ***

    The earliest of his publications is Custom and Myth (1884). In Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887) he explained the “irrational” elements of mythology as survivals from more primitive forms.”

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    • Thank you, jhNY! I had forgotten about those extra flourishes in “She” — a novel I read after you recommended it. A VERY memorable book. And I guess the stuff in it COULD have been real, except for Ayesha collecting Social Security for a couple of millennia. 🙂

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  23. I think mixing genres can make for more complex stories. If a writer just “stays in the lane” of a genre, their book might satisfy readers who want a dose of a “proper” mystery or horror novel. But I like the creativity when a writer takes elements from more than one genre and put them together.

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  25. It’s a difficult topic for me today, Dave, because I always have problems with keeping to exact genres in my own writing, and often find certain genres – psychological suspense and crime, for example -formulaic in the extreme. I have books that I’ve tried to make literary, for example, but they’re also contemporary, and some move into the future, which make them speculative to some extent. I also can’t resist putting a twist or two into my stories of whatever sort too, and when the marketing ‘experts’ suggest dropping the names of authors successful in my genre into the ads I make for my books – I can”t do it, because I don’t know of any who write quite as I do. I can’t even think right now of any ‘mixed genre’ books that I know of, partly because I’m tired and also because I just believe in authors writing what works for them, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into a genre. If I think of any books that fit this I’ll be back. Many thanks. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Laura! I believe not sticking to one exact genre is a positive thing, though, as you mentioned (and I mentioned in another reply), it does make marketing somewhat more challenging. Not sticking to one exact genre makes for less-formulaic work, as you note. So…good for you! Heck, my own recent Misty the cat book is all over the map — nonfiction, fiction, comedic, serious in parts, and so on. 🙂

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      • Yes – I’m sure multi-genre work makes for more interesting writing, and Misty sounds like a wonderful character. Genres make it easier to ‘compartmentalise’ stories, but real life isn’t like that. It’s part of the greatness of Shakespeare (here he comes to my rescue) that he knew this and mixed the content of his plays. What’s strange though is that later societies have needed to categorise the plays as either comedy or tragedy (the histories are an interesting genre, factual history having a few liberties taken with it) ‘Othello’ for example has a clown, who appears once or twice to add little comic relief, but I’ve never yet seen a production with him left in. What I like best of his works are the ‘problem comedies’, plays that end well but are a bit problematic in doing so. ‘Measure for Measure’ works well in this, because it ends well with Marianne wanting to be with Angelo, the bad guy of the piece, and Isabella not answering the Duke when he proposes to her. Usually this is staged with Isabella eventually putting out her hand in tacit acceptance, but it has been done where she shakes her head and turns away. And maybe that’s the point with genres: life is a mixture, and I like my fiction to be as life-like as possible. That’s just me, and others like the ‘security’ of a fixed storyline – but I won’t be the one writing it for them, lol. There. I managed to come up with a writer who mixes genres, at the end. Thanks for another great brain teaser, Dave. 🙂

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        • So true, Laura, about real life often not being compartmentalized. And that’s a very interesting take on Shakespeare — his tragedies were indeed not 100% tragic and his comedies not 100% comedic. You seem to be quite an expert on Shakespeare; I’ve only read or seen maybe a half-dozen of his plays.

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          • I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I’ve studied and seen quite a few of his plays. I’ve got a box set of all his plays that were made by the BBC quite a long time ago, and I still have to watch them all. It’s wonderful though how universal his stories are, and to see them redone in modern dress/locations, where they seem quite at home. 🙂

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              • Indeed. I find it fascinating too that, while in our times we’d stage Julius Caesar (for example) in togas etc, clothes that we know were worn in ancient Rome, in Shakespeare’s time his plays were largely staged in contemporary dress. To invest in ‘specialist’ costumes, that could only be used for one or maybe two plays, would mean a huge financial outlay which wouldn’t necessarily be recouped. There is a picture extant, however, of a production of Titus Andronicus in which the costumes were accurate to the period in which the play was set – clearly a donation was made by somebody rich and powerful to help with this. It’s fascinating. 🙂

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        • Shakespeare’s plays are an example of a particular genre too: proper material for Elizabethan play production which might prove popular and profitable when performed.

          The history plays are a good example of how fraught this work might be,if done without a cautious eye on the preferences of the Crown. Your theater might be shuttered; your works might be banned. So deriving the proper interpretation of history from approved sources such as Holinshed was prerequisite to success, continued livelihood and even freedom.

          Shakespeare wrote plays for money– for himself, his theater and his players– comedies, tragedies,histories, etc. And in so doing he was conforming to the dictates, tastes and politics of his age, and made plays that could be categorized as examples of a genre– Elizabethan plays.

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  26. I think its good to introduce elements of fantasy or the supernatural to books solidly grounded in reality. That grounding is important, which is why it works for literary authors like Atwood.

    I’ve done this in my own novels. One includes some poetry. But I have a hard time categorizing them.

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  28. An excellent post, Dave. Why do we like to have an element of the unknown interwoven with reality? Is it because we have an intuition that there is more to reality than we know?

    Two books that I read this past month have elements of this theme: “The Life She Was Given” by Ellen Marie Wiseman and “Rock Paper Scissors” by Alice Feeney.

    I believe that these books resonate with our experience because we know that past (our past) defines our future (our future). When we read books that speak to both past and future, we are reminded that life is a tapestry of intertwined realities and possibilities.

    “Life was too big and too short and too important to talk about the lack of rain or the latest gossip. She wanted to know how people felt about themselves and one another, whether they were happy or sad. She wanted to know what made them feel loved and what hurt them to the core.” Ellen Marie Wiseman, “The life She was Given”

    P.S. It is good to be back from my blog break!!!

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! Welcome back from your blog break! You were greatly missed. (Though it was very nice that you posted several created-in-advance pieces while you were gone. 🙂 )

      “Why do we like to have an element of the unknown interwoven with reality? Is it because we have an intuition that there is more to reality than we know?” — that is a profound question!

      I appreciate the two book examples you offered, and that final quote about what is really important.

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      • It is so good to be back, Dave. I’m glad that you liked the schedule posts. I have been exploring how AI is influencing the creative spirit – from art, to poetry to writing, to dance, philosophy. We live in very interesting times. I’m certain the candle makes felt the same way when the light bulb was invented. And yet, now, we are moving into the creative sphere that has never been tested in the same way. Quills to ballpoint pens is not at the same level of transformation as we are experiencing with AI. I continue to learn and learn and learn!!

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        • I agree, Rebecca, that AI is a monumental development that will shape the future and is already shaping the present. I think it has more negative aspects (such as replacing some individual human creativity, costing many jobs, etc.) than positive aspects — though some positive aspects. Still, AI growth is inevitable.

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          • At the precise moment we as humans should be attempting judicious and conservative use of energy, given the existential threat that the climate crisis is to ourselves and many other life forms, it is of course the perfect time to unveil AI, which promises to dwarf the present profligate waste of energy resident in the production of crypto-currencies.

            Each day, last time I checked, bitcoin alone used the same amount of electricity as the nation of Denmark. The waste of resources that bitcoin production causes used to seriously concern me until I realized how much energy was wasted on streaming and gaming on the interwebs.

            But given the psychopathia resident at the tippy-top of the world economy, I certainly agree: AI is inevitable, as is the ever-increasing demand for energy for non-essential purposes.

            “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”–Walt Kelly’s Pogo

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  29. I am always impressed with authors who can mix genres successfully. Diana Gabaldon does this very well with the Outlander series. Historical, science fiction, romance, adventure, and family saga all mixed together.

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    • Thank you, Darlene! You are so right about the “Outlander” series; it is absolutely multi-genre. I loved all nine books (can’t wait for the 10th/supposedly final one) and thought of mentioning them today until I decided that I had included “Outlander” a little too often in this blog during the past five years. 🙂 But I’m glad YOU mentioned the series today. 🙂

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