In her terrific debut crime novel, Kat Davis takes our obsession of solving old crimes and uses it to propel a page-turning psychological thriller. In a Dark Mirror blends dark crime and a tinge of horror to create an unforgettable book.
We asked the author to answer our recurring A Life of Books questionnaire so readers could get to know her a little better and get book recommendations to add to their pile of must-reads.
Is there a book or series that, when you think back, helped define your childhood?
When I was nine or ten, I checked out a book by Lois Lowry from the library called Autumn Street. I think I picked it because I knew the author, but it’s not one of her more well-known ones. It’s told from the point of view of a girl whose father is fighting in World War II. It has a devastating ending in which something awful happens to a child, and I think it really shocked me to find that in a children’s book. I was used to books that always had happy endings, even if they felt false. I don’t know If I’d say it defined my childhood, but I do remember it as a book that changed my understanding of what novels can do.
Would you want any children in your life (yours or relatives’) to read those too? Or, what’s your philosophy on what children read?
My daughter is seven, and I probably wouldn’t share that one with her yet, but I find myself being fairly liberal with the books I will read aloud to her. We’ve read a couple of books that deal glancingly with the Holocaust, for instance, including Lowry’s Number the Stars. My attitude is that I’d rather read certain things with her and have the option to try to frame and discuss the difficult parts. I think it will be different when she starts reading those kind of chapter books on her own. I guess I hope she will feel that she can come to me if she reads something she finds disturbing and we can talk about it.
I discovered some of my favorite writers in high school. What writers did you discover then? Either ones that were assigned for class or ones you found on your own.
My parents had a bookshelf where they kept a lot of the books they had read in college, and I basically worked my way through that, which is how I ended up reading a lot of Faulkner and Woolf. I also got into Dostoyevsky and Chekhov that way, which led to me majoring in Russian in college. At the same time that I would read these big impressive books, though, I would still sneak in other things. My mother was a school librarian, and she suggested I read the first Harry Potter book long before they were so popular. I remember her telling me that the second one was already in print in the UK, but we’d have to wait because it wasn’t out yet in the U.S.
Are there any books that you read while writing your debut that helped shape the direction you took your own book?
When I started In a Dark Mirror, I was thinking of it as horror. I definitely revisited Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I read Victor LaValle’s The Changeling and Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger. I also checked out some short fiction by Samanta Schweblin and Mariana Enriquez. Looking back, I think I should have read more crime fiction. I remember recently reading Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor and Vengeance is Mine by Marie NDiaye, which are both basically crime novels albeit very self-consciously “literary” ones, and I felt a real kinship with them and I thought I should have been reading more books like this, but I guess we don’t always know what we’re working on when we undertake a project.
What is a book you’ve read that you thought, Damn, I wish that was mine?
I know I just mentioned it, but I had that feeling reading Melchor’s Hurricane Season. I could truly never write a novel like that (it’s very grounded in her knowledge of the drug trade in Veracruz!) but I think I also have always admired that dense, modernist, stream-of-consciousness prose style. I read it in a wonderful translation by Sophie Hughes, but Melchor definitely cites Faulkner as an influence. In contrast, one of my writing teachers once said that reading my writing is like drinking a glass of water. She didn’t mean it as a bad thing, but it’s very true. I seem to be at my best when I write simply, eliminating any unnecessary words. But maybe that’s why I so admire writers with a more maximalist style, because I know it’s something I can’t do.
What have you been reading lately that you can recommend to Debutiful readers?
For similar vibes to In a Dark Mirror, I would recommend Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody. It also deals with the overlap between crime and internet obsession. Jess Lourey’s Unspeakable Things is a mystery with a child narrator and is very dark. I just bought Mariana Enriquez’s Our Share of Night, which I’m looking forward to digging into.
And, finally, I have to ask… I’m sorry. What’s next? But wait! Only use three words.
Another dark novel
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