Lana Sabarwal’s Maya, Dead and Dreaming: A Debut That Defies Expectations
In a literary landscape where first novels often show their seams, Lana Sabarwal’s Maya, Dead and Dreaming arrives with the polish and precision of a seasoned storyteller. What makes this achievement even more striking is Sabarwal’s background: an economist specialising in international development, a world away from the gothic undertones and psychological suspense of her debut. Yet, far from being a limitation, her analytical training sharpens the novel’s execution. Every revelation is meticulously placed, every character’s motive weighed with the exactness of a researcher. At the same time, the prose retains the atmospheric richness of classic suspense writers like Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier. Sabarwal’s work doesn’t imitate her idols; it converses with them, offering a fresh voice that is equally adept at dissecting human frailty as it is at crafting a gripping mystery.
From the outset, Maya, Dead and Dreaming establishes an unsettling tone that lingers like fog over the fictional town of Shogie. The novel’s horror elements are not supernatural in the traditional sense, but rather rooted in psychological dread —a technique reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s slow-burn unease. When Munna, the narrator, receives the anonymous letter declaring Maya Hickman’s death was no accident, the moment is charged with visceral terror: “Perhaps my fear had invested that moment with an entirely imagined significance, but I could swear that the air shifted, the room darkened, and a heavy cape of dread descended upon my shoulders.” Sabarwal’s ability to translate abstract fear into physical sensation—“My heart raced, my nerves screamed, my skin felt clammy”—demonstrates a command of tension that many debut authors struggle to achieve. The letter’s warning, “And soon death will come again,” is a masterstroke, embedding a ticking clock within the narrative without resorting to cliché.
The psychological tension is equally deft. Sabarwal, whose professional work examines systemic power and gender dynamics, applies that lens to the Hickman family’s fractured dynamics. Josh Hickman’s controlled menace, “I will see you in hell before I let you touch my family,” is a study in how authority masks vulnerability. His wife Shelly, meanwhile, is rendered with heartbreaking complexity. Her trembling hands and desperate plea—“I don’t have the time. Not even a thimbleful.”—could easily paint her as a victim, but Sabarwal subverts expectations. Like Christie’s best villains, Shelly’s fragility is a carefully constructed performance, revealed through Karenina’s razor-sharp deductions: “You made it so that it was all Josh… What if we considered the possibility that he was telling the truth, and it was you who was lying?” This layering of deception mirrors the novel’s central theme: the stories we tell others, and ourselves, to survive.
Sabarwal’s dialogue crackles with subtext, another hallmark of writers like Christie and Ruth Ware. Karenina, the enigmatic psychoanalyst, is particularly compelling. Her quiet provocations—“Tell me,” delivered as “both a coax and a command”—reveal a mind always probing beneath surfaces. Even minor exchanges carry weight, such as Emma Hickman’s searing recollection of childhood gossip: “The whispers, the side-eyed looks of calculation… And the pretense! That was the worst part.” These moments elevate the novel beyond a simple whodunit, transforming it into an exploration of collective guilt and complicity.
Lana Sabarwal’s Maya, Dead and Dreaming carries the distinct influence of her literary heroes, Agatha Christie and Jhumpa Lahiri, yet stands as a completely fresh work. Like Christie, Sabarwal handles suspicion with surgical precision, allowing it to simmer beneath Shogie’s civilised surface until the tension reaches a breaking point. The novel pulses with the kind of atmospheric dread that Christie perfected, where ordinary elements, such as a letter, a creek, or a family photograph, become loaded with hidden meaning and threat. At the same time, Sabarwal brings Lahiri’s profound emotional insight to the story, revealing characters who feel profoundly disconnected from their own lives. Munna struggles between professional objectivity and personal terror, Shelly hides her calculating nature behind a mask of vulnerability, and Maya exists as a spectral presence caught between memory and legend. The investigative aspects, including Karenina’s brilliant deductions and the strategic placement of misleading clues, recall Christie’s signature style. However, the emotional consequences reflect Lahiri’s touch, showing how maternal love can turn destructive, how grief can breed bitterness between siblings, and how communities can disguise their involvement as mere concern. Rather than simply paying tribute to these influences, Sabarwal skillfully blends them, combining Christie’s intricate plotting with Lahiri’s poetic sadness. What remains is a mystery that stays with readers not because of shocking reveals, but because of its honest portrayal of the narratives we construct, the identities we suppress, and the heavy cost of confronting either.
Perhaps the novel’s greatest triumph is its structure. Sabarwal, the economist, understands cause and effect, parcelling out clues with the precision of a statistician. Yet she never sacrifices emotional resonance for cleverness. The climax, a public unravelling at Linden Law’s estate, is both intellectually satisfying and deeply human, a rarity in a genre often criticised for prioritising twists over truth.
For a debut novelist to deliver such a fully realised work is extraordinary. For an economist to do so, while retaining the elegance and depth of literary suspense, is nothing short of remarkable. Maya, Dead and Dreaming doesn’t just announce Sabarwal as a talent to watch; it reasserts the timeless power of a well-told mystery—one where the real enigma isn’t the crime, but the people who hide it. In an era of disposable thrillers, Sabarwal’s debut is a reminder that the best suspense endures because it understands, as Christie did, that the human heart is the most labyrinthine mystery of all.
Nidhi for The Last Critic
