Alex Jackson is buried alive inside his own body, a body which lies in a long-term coma following a climbing accident. He can’t see, he can’t move, he can’t speak. This is the terrifying fate of the protagonist of Emily Koch’s debut novel If I Die Before I Wake (Harvill Secker, £12.99). The doctors believe that Alex has no awareness of his surroundings, but he can still think and feel, and he can hear people speaking. His family debate withdrawing life support, and his friends talk about his girlfriend Bea moving on, finding someone new. And from these fragments of speech he starts to piece together a shocking truth: that his fall wasn’t in fact an accident. He needs to find out who tried to kill him, and why, and to protect the people he loves before they too become victims.
Thankfully, Koch steers clear of sentiment and self-pity, allowing Alex to relish his memories of climbing, and of being in love, even if the urge to die takes him over at times. Quite often, the words he says to himself, the unheard words, are painful to read. And yet the quest for truth energises him. In the darkness of the stilled body, this is a novel which glows with life.
A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window (HarperCollins, £12.99) also deals with confinement, in this case, extreme agoraphobia. Anna Fox hasn’t left her New York home for ten months, fearful of taking a single step outdoors. Instead, she sits by her window and watches the neighbours come and go. She’s fascinated when the Russells move in across the way, as they appear to be the perfect family. And then one night Anna hears a scream, and sees someone being killed in the Russell household.
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