WHAT THEY DO IN THE DARK is an extraordinary, brave, unsettling debut novel. It is a seductive and ultimately bone-chilling narrative that draws you into the world of its young protagonists with a warmth and ease that only serve to make its conclusion all the more deadly. Throughout the novel, we circle and alight only in moments on inflections of neglect, abuse, and culpability; and as readers we are utterly implicated in a final crescendo that draws together each fleeting brush with the unthinkable that we may have chosen to overlook, and forces a confrontation that is brutal and devastating.
After a UK auction, last week Amanda Coe and her agent, Anna Webber, accepted the highest of three best offers from Ursula Doyle of Virago/Little, Brown. The underbidders were Jonathan Cape (Dan Franklin) and Sceptre (Carole Welch). This is the most exciting response that Anna Webber (the literary agent of last year’s Orange Prize shortlisted debut author, Samantha Harvey, and Booker Prize shortlisted, Adam Foulds) has ever had for a novel she has submitted. And it says a lot for such a disturbing and controversial novel to have had three of the most prestigious English publishers bidding for it. The US rights also sold at auction (via agent Zoe Pagnamenta) to Jill Bialosky of W.W. Norton.
Italian rights were swiftly pre-empted during The London Book Fair by Andrea Canobbio of Einaudi who was given the manuscript exclusively the first day of the fair and read WHAT THEY DO IN THE DARK overnight. He said that this was the only other time he’s bought a novel ahead of an English-language publisher was when he bought the Booker Prize-winning novel The White Tiger.
Anna Webber describes WHAT THEY DO IN THE DARK as “an uncomfortable, important novel that will get people talking about child abuse and exploitation. Amanda Coe dares to look at the victims without a trace of sentimentality. WHAT THEY DO IN THE DARK shows how victims can turn into the most fiendish perpetrators and that the question of guilt will never be satisfactorily answered.” Comparisons are We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, I’m Not Scared by Niccolo Amanniti, and Michael Haneke’s film The White Ribbon. Amanda Coe had a first collection of stories called A Whore in the Kitchen published by Virago in 2002 and since then has embarked on a very successful screenwriting career. The Times recently named her one of the top ten women in television. (Amanda Coe’s film and tv rights are handled by Cathy King at Independent Talent.)
