Tag Archives: dark fiction

Reading corner: A book to float your boat

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In a family built on lies, who can you trust?

My dad accompanied me to this year’s Lit Fest, for two reasons. The day before had seen biblical floods in Dubai, and with little drainage in the emirate, I feared the roads would be awash with giant lakes. So Dad was my co-pilot. But he’s also a bookworm, and so I promised him that if he came, I’d buy him a book.

“Have you chosen one?” I asked after coming out of a social media seminar.
Dad smiled and beckoned for me to follow him. I could tell by the twinkle in his eye that something had piqued his interest.

Screen Shot 2016-05-28 at 13.37.35He led me to a book stand on which was displayed the novel I was already excited about buying for myself: Annabel Kantaria’s The Disappearance.

“It’s about a cruise,” he said, rubbing his hands with glee. I should add at this point that my parents are BIG cruisers, hence why the cover and blurb grabbed him.

I’d been wanting to get my hands on this book ever since reading Kantaria’s debut novel, Coming Home, last year. Discovering that my Dad also wanted to read her new release was a lovely surprise (although I always worry about sharing book recommendations with my Dad in case it’s crammed with sex scenes).

Thankfully, The Disappearance is no Fifty Shades of Grey. In keeping with the massively popular dark, ‘domestic noir’ trend, yet bright and uplifting at the same time, it’s a beautifully written story of family secrets and betrayals, set in 1970s India and present-day Cornwall, with a few Greek Islands thrown in to pepper the narrative with colour.

The author conjures up such a wonderful sense of place in describing the characters’ surroundings that you feel like you’re in bustling, sweltering-hot India, too. In the second half of the book, it’s as though you’ve actually boarded a cruise ship and are floating along, stopping at glorious, sun-soaked Mediterranean islands. The descriptions of India and the cruise were my favourite parts of the book.

The spectacular settings aside, the story is threaded with an undercurrent of danger to come. Right at the beginning, we find out that the main character, Audrey – who invited her adult twins Lexi and John to join her on the cruise – has gone missing at sea, on the eve of her 70th birthday. In flashbacks, we learn that she married a dangerous but enigmatic man; her son shares similar, sinister characteristics. John’s motives are tantalisingly ambiguous, especially after it’s revealed Audrey went missing within hours of breaking the news the twins would inherit a fortune after her death.

I don’t want to give the ending away, so I’ll say no more on this cracking, fast-paced story, but if you need another reason to read this book, it’s that, having read psychology to degree-level, the author conjures up vivid, complex and often chilling characters, whose dysfunctional interactions will not only keep you turning the pages, but will also keep you guessing until the epilogue. I’d hazard a guess that she’s been on a cruise, too!

Buy the book here.

Dark Fiction: Coming Home

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If you love books, you’ve probably noticed that a popular genre recently has been dark fiction. Call it psychological suspense or ‘suburban noir’, the trendsetter was the brilliant ‘Gone Girl’, a novel that spawned a raft of books about conflicted families in peril.

I’d been eagerly awaiting the release of Coming Home – the debut domestic thriller by Expat Telegraph blogger and journalist Annabel Kantaria – and I wasn’t disappointed: the tag line, ‘The darker the secrets, the closer they lie’ rang true the whole way through, and I was kept guessing right until the very end by the ambiguous characters.

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A must-read for anyone who thinks their family is dysfunctional

I’m not going to give away too much about the plot, suffice to say it’s about 28-year-old Evie, who lives in Dubai and gets the phone call every expat dreads: her father has died unexpectedly and she must return home, to the web of lies spun by her family. The first clue is that her mother is acting strangely. Then, as one secret after another is revealed in quick succession, like a hail of stones, Evie realises that everything she thought she knew about her parents is a manipulation of the truth.

I caught Annabel at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in March, and the thing that struck me was the dedication it takes to write a novel that actually ends up on bookshelves. “I can’t quite believe it’s my book,” she said, revealing that it was two years in the making, with the idea first forming five years before that.

Everything changed for Annabel when she won the festival’s Montegrappa First Fiction competition in 2013. Her submission, the first chapter of ‘The Marmalade Murders’, caught the eye of literary agent Luigi Bonomi. Six weeks later, she had a 60,000-word first draft ready for him; two more drafts followed, then came the book deal, with Harlequin Mira – and more edits, which Annabel worked on while her two children were off school for the summer holidays. “I must have written 200,000 words in total, of which 90,000 made it into the finished book.”

Dubai as Evie’s expat location was edited in and out, and her character went through various guises. “At first, she had children, but as she had to go away for five weeks, they got in the way,” said Annabel. “Then she was a divorcee, but got too bitter, so that didn’t work either.”

The hard work was all worth it though – at the literary festival, Annabel enjoyed a proud moment signing a copy of her book for Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project, and her gripping novel is already being well received. She’s currently working on her second book, with a third in the pipeline.

“I’m very fortunate that my children go to school,” she told us. “They leave the house at 7am, and I’m at my computer at 7.10am, in my pyjamas – writing in two-hour blocks until 2pm.”

Her next shift takes place at 2.30am, when her husband frequently hears the sound of a pencil scratching in the dark. “Some of my best ideas and dialogue come to me in the middle of the night,” she said.

Coming Home is available in Dubai already and launches in the UK tomorrow – buy it here (listed as one of Amazon’s Rising Stars 2015)