This is your fifth novel after Something in the Water, Mr. Nobody, The Disappearing Act, and The Family Game. What inspired Look in the Mirror?
I loved the idea of writing a very fast-paced action thriller and mixing that with T. S. Eliot and the themes of what it means to be a parent or a child. A lot of strong flavors there to dig into! I was also inspired by various other writers and their stories: the gothic governess tale of The Turn of the Screw, Angela Carter’s brilliant Bluebeard story “The Bloody Chamber,” Agatha Christie (of course), and screenwriter Hwang Dong-hyuk’s brilliant thriller Squid Game.
You’re known for your thrillers full of nonstop action, but also the way you explore the emotional lives of women and moral conundrums. Look in the Mirror wrestles with some big questions about family, trust, and the nature of survival. Why was this important for you to explore?
I was interested in looking at the idea that we are increasingly living in an age where there is a commodification of personal identity. Backstory, lived experience, and heritage can have the potential to pigeonhole us, almost setting us in aspic in terms of who we are and what should be expected of us in the future. The characters in Look in the Mirror have to fight through their pasts in order to make it out of the house alive—I thought that would be an interesting premise for a thriller.
What’s one challenge you had while writing this book?
Knowing what level to set the room challenges at! I wanted the reader to be able to solve some rooms instantly and then wonder how to get through others…but it’s important to remember that each game is tailored to the individual experiencing it. Your room would contain answers and challenges from your past!
Did you learn anything about yourself while writing?
I think I learned what both Maria and Nina learned—almost everything is solvable if you can just step back, take a breath, and reassess.
Both characters get out of tight situations this way, by not letting the import of the situation take control of them. But in the inverse, both have moments where they let their instincts, their primal impulses, take over—though they decide to do this, they do not let themselves be subsumed by the moment.
And for the final question, something just for fun! If Look in the Mirror were to become a movie, who would you want to see cast?
Oooo, this is an exciting question! Well, the first casting that immediately leaps to mind is the dad from the 2020 Oscar-winning Korean movie Parasite, Song Kang-ho, for Yang Joon-gi. That would be an incredible coup.
For Maria, I think Marisa Abela, the actress about to appear as Amy Winehouse in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black, would be perfect. She could definitely embody Maria’s streetwise strength and fierce intelligence.
Nina could be played by either British actress Rebecca Hall or by Normal People and Where the Crawdads Sing actress Daisy Edgar-Jones.
And for Nina’s father, perhaps Brian Cox on his softest setting! Or the lovely Vincent Price.