INTERVIEW - Author A. A. Chaudhuri

 I'm so excited to share this with you all! Author of She's Mine and this year's The Loyal Friend, A. A. Chaudhuri, has kindly offered to do a Q&A with me!

I asked her about her newest book, her favourite Italian dish, and what her all-time favourite book is - read the interview below! 😇💕

How does it feel to be releasing another book into the world?

EXCITING! It’s always such an amazing, rewarding feeling releasing a new book. It’s the culmination of months of hard work, including painstaking editing (!) and so to see it out there in the world gives me a great sense of joy and satisfaction.

It’s also a little scary! As an author you try your utmost to make your book as compelling and error-free as possible, but writing is such a subjective industry and there’ll inevitably be critics. But it’s all part and parcel of the job, and I’m pleased to say I’ve been thrilled by the positive response and fabulous reviews I’ve received so far from advance readers.

I recently received my author paperback copies and I have to say holding my book for the first time and seeing my name on the cover, never gets old! I also adore the graphics for The Loyal Friend, Hera and the design team have done the most incredible job and the feedback has been amazing!

What was your inspiration for The Loyal Friend, and how did you come up with the story?

I wanted to base it in a setting I didn’t feel had been done before in the psychological thriller genre, and with the health and fitness industry having become a key part of so many people’s lifestyles - largely owing to the stress we encounter on a daily basis, along with the push given by lockdown to keep ourselves fit and healthy - I also felt the setting would be widely relatable.

Also because I know from my own experiences that unlike the gym, fitness classes attract a huge variety of attendees of varying ages and fitness levels, not to mention different genders.

Having said all that, although the backdrop for the novel is a health club, the story centres on so much more than that, chiefly the interplay between three very different women and past and present events that are prompting them to act and live out their lives in the way they do. Natalie, Grace, and Susan are ostensibly three normal women tackling everyday issues so many women around the world face these days.

Body hang-ups, the advent of menopause, juggling work, family and elderly parents all feature in some way, along with other more delicate issues of child abuse and infidelity, all of which I feel are themes readers are able to empathise with. Female friendships, especially toxic ones, always make for highly addictive reads, and the friendships in my book can definitely be labelled as this, but I also wanted to write a book that shows how taking a wrong path and/or doing something unforgiveable can have a domino effect on the lives of so many people and in the most dreadful way.

Like Grace, I have struggled with my own mental health owing to the stress of caring for my elderly parents, while managing a career and young family, while I have also come across women like Susan who appear to have the perfect life but really are concealing a feeling of disenchantment and emptiness behind the glamourous, happy veneer.

The pressures on women to perform and ‘have it all’ can be intense these days, and that’s something I also hope comes through in the book and resonates with people, especially female readers. Before Covid, I used to work out with a lovely group of girls at a local gym and this experience helped to inspire me and create authenticity around the novel, in terms of the set-up of group classes and diverse groups of characters who inhabit them.

I am pleased to say, however, that nothing so scandalous happened at my fitness classes, and none of the women featured bear any resemblance to them.

Is there anything you can tell us about the book, without giving anything away?

Like She’s Mine, The Loyal Friend is a dark, twisty, perhaps somewhat twisted (!) read, in which I take my readers on a complex journey through the minds of my key characters where not everything is as straightforward as it perhaps at first seems.

My book centres on the disappearance of young, beautiful, vivacious fitness instructor, Jade Pascal, who goes missing in mysterious circumstances and the ensuing police investigation to find out what happened to her.

It’s told mainly through the perspectives of three very different women – Natalie, Susan and Grace - who attend her classes, all with dark, complicated pasts and secrets they’ll do anything to keep buried, and all of whom could have reason to wish Jade ill.

How did you decide on the type of women Susan, Grace and Natalie would be?

Life is full of diverse characters and a writer is never off duty observing the people in their own lives or those they might see on television/the press, or even in the street! Be warned, ha-ha!

So, inevitably I will be influenced by these factors, but when deciding on the type of women Susan, Grace and Natalie would be, I wanted to make them as distinct as possible from each other, each having their own unique idiosyncrasies, but all having dark secrets in common that consume them.

I’d like to think that they also exemplify the different types of women we all might come across in our everyday lives. This is so important in the psychological thriller genre – making characters and the situations they face relatable to the reader – thereby enabling readers to connect with them and be drawn into their narratives.

Grace, for example, is a working mum struggling to cope with managing her job on top of a young family and caring for sick, elderly parents - a stressful situation so many women around the world, including myself, may find themselves in.

Natalie, on the other hand, is a young, single woman who’s had a horrendous childhood; she suffers from OCD and a lack of confidence, and therefore finds it hard enough managing her own life, let alone caring for others.

Susan, in contrast, is rich, confident and highly materialistic; someone who always puts herself first, but deep down suffers an emptiness she’s desperate to conceal.

Through each of my characters, important and universal issues like child abuse/neglect, family dysfunction, grief, infidelity and feeling unfulfilled in mid-life are explored, thereby differentiating them from one another but also showing how three very different women could be brought together by an exercise class designed to offer an outlet from their everyday hang-ups and sufferings.

Since you’re a lover of all things Italian, what’s your favourite meal from Italy?

That’s a hard one! I love all the delicious fish dishes they do so brilliantly in the south of Italy, including grilled calamari which is one of my all-time favourites.

But you can’t beat a plate of Spaghetti Vongole following a starter of Buffalo mozzarella and rounded off with some amazing Italian gelato which I rate as second to none!

What made you retire from working in law and become an author?

Although I enjoyed some aspects of being a lawyer, made some wonderful friends (including my husband!) and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to write my legal thrillers authentically without the experience I gained from law, it was never the perfect fit for me, not the way being an author is.

I found the work too dull and lacking in creativity. I am happiest writing, letting my imagination run wild with no boundaries or rules curtailing me, meaning it never feels like a chore, which sadly law, which as I said, can be rather dry and formulaic, often did!

Law requires a thick skin and certain ruthlessness to survive, and it got to the point where I wasn’t enjoying it. The City is an especially tough place to work, and I came across quite a few hard-nosed characters who made my life miserable and who I didn’t much want to be around.

It wasn’t for me as I said, but I’m grateful for the inspiration it gave me to write my books as well as teaching me attention to detail and the importance of disciplined meticulous planning, both of which are essential in thriller writing.

It also made me a stronger person – able to withstand the writing rejections over the years although I won’t lie, there have been tears (!) - and I’m happy to say that career-wise, it’s the best move I could have made. There’s nothing better than getting lost in my characters and the worlds they inhabit.

Finally, what is your all-time favourite book?

That’s an impossible question!! Simply because I love so many books of different genres, thriller, romantic, historical and so on! So I am going to have to cheat and say my all-time favourite thriller would have to be A Time to Kill.

It’s a powerful, moving story, flawlessly plotted with diverse, compelling, believable characters, and a plot that moves along at breakneck speed, but which also addresses some poignant issues that touch the heart in a way that will stay with you forever. It’s Grisham’s best, in my opinion.

The Loyal Friend releases tomorrow (June 23rd, 2022)!