Callie Kazumi chats debut mystery thriller Cuckoo

Do you really know what your significant other does for work? In Cuckoo, Claire finds out she knows nothing about her fiancé Noah’s job in the most horrible way. She gets no answers from Noah and to her horror, Noah has a new girlfriend and is ghosting her completely. Refusing to accept this, Claire decides to get her answers, no matter what. To celebrate the release of Cuckoo, we invited Callie Kazumi to chat with us about the inspirations and research behind the book.

Congratulations on your debut! Please tell us the inspiration behind Cuckoo. 

Thank you! The idea came to me during lockdown when I first saw what my husband’s working day looked like, listened to him taking work calls from the sofa at home. I realised that before Covid, I would always just believe whatever he told me about how he spent his day at work. He could have been secretly working for MI5 for all I knew. I never questioned him, afraid it would end up with me having to listen to him talk about spreadsheets. That triggered the idea – he could have not been working at all, and I never would have known. What if he lied about where he went every day? The idea for Noah, and Claire’s predicament, came to me fully formed from this late-night question.

What do you think you would have done if you were Claire — finding out that Noah wasn’t working at where he was supposed to be? 

Poor Claire, I certainly would not have trailed around London looking for him, that’s for sure! I’m a very straight-up person, and would always want to just ask what was going on and clear the air as rapidly as possible. But I also am really good at boundaries (thanks to my therapist, shoutout!) so I think as soon as I realised that he did not want to talk to me or give me any answers, I’d cut him off hard and fast. And probably sign up to therapy to help me accept that all the questions I’d have would go unanswered!

Claire got ghosted by Noah, and some readers might say it’s because she approached the situation incorrectly. Why are we blaming Claire? 

It’s quick and easy to blame women, particularly when they become ‘hysterical’ or overly emotional, which is very much what Claire does. We assume that this is the reason for pushing him away, or scaring him off. Particularly where we see that Noah is by all means successful and, compared to Claire, quite high-functioning in society, making her look even more unhinged. We love to have a clear villain in the story, and it’s easy to point at the over-dramatic, clingy and desperate woman. I personally prefer to think of the villain as looking like a corporate guy who cheats and goes on runs every Sunday, but who am I to decide?

The second half of Cuckoo is set in a courtroom trial. Between the diary entries, the trial, and the rest of the book, which part did you enjoy writing the most? 

I loved writing the flashback scenes with Mother. I found it very cathartic, and there were more complex layers of emotion there than the scenes between Claire and Noah. Emotional abuse can be very subtle, death by one thousand cuts versus one big stab, and it was interesting trying to get that across in so few scenes without overdoing it.

 

In fact, what’s the research process behind the trial? 

Terrible! I spent HOURS reading up about law in both the UK and USA, as well as courtroom proceedings and what happens post-arrest to citizens. My best friend (who inspired the Grosvenor character!) got many phone calls from me asking her lawyer questions, too. In the end, the trial was written as a mix ‘n’ match of both UK and USA proceedings, because America tends to do it all more dramatically, with docks and lawyers next to their clients and people walking into the room and down past all of the gallery. I wanted this to achieve the closeness between Grosvenor and Claire through the proceedings, but also to up the dramatics. Someone reviewed saying I clearly hadn’t done the most basic legal research, but I had done loads – I just chose to sometimes ignore legal accuracy in favour of spectacle.

Finally, we are not going to spoil anyone, but was it easy to come up with the twist? Was it like an “a-ha” moment when you came up with it? 

The twist on the very last page came as I was writing it – it was totally unplanned but somehow suddenly made sense to me at the time. Sadly for both my agent and editor, I can’t seem to replicate it due to it’s spontaneity, but hopefully that in place of an ‘omg’ twist moment, book two brings something different to the table…

Cuckoo is available to buy now here.