Interrogating the Boundaries of Performance and Transaction: Urban Embodiments in Louise Welsh's The Bullet Trick

Abstract

This article explores the representation of the female body in entertainment in the novel The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh, an author of reference in contemporary Scottish fiction and the tradition of Tartan Noir. Considering the female body as central for the development of the plot, this paper analyses the strategies by which the novel contests traditional gender dichotomies as well as makes visible the agency of female corporeality in entertainment transactions. It will be argued that the body becomes an instrument for finding alternative ways of confronting violence and objectification, as well as for interrogating the apparently impermeable limits that separate performance from reality. The article also acknowledges
the protagonist role that urban spaces have in contemporary crime fiction and in the articulation of the novel, thereby addressing how they can also contribute to the feminist reading of the novel.