On the train, gone, or with a tattoo: what happens to all those 'Girls' in book titles?

Author Emily Mandel decided to crunch the data and found if a book with ‘girl’ in the title was written by a man, the girl was more likely to end up dead

From Gone Girl to The Girl on the Train to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the author Emily St John Mandel has crunched the numbers on books with “girl” in their title and discovered that the girl is “significantly more likely to end up dead”, if the author of the book is male.

Mandel, author of the award-winning novel Station Eleven, was curious about the glut of bestselling titles with “girl” in their titles, a publishing trend which has mushroomed since Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series was published, and which continues to grow. In a piece for Nate Silver’s data journalism website FiveThirtyEight, she analysed Goodreads’ database of books that include the word “girl” in their title.

Continue reading...