Book Review: The Cellar

The Cellar

Minette Walters, like Ruth Rendell and Gillian Flynn, revels in truly dark, twisted characters; that much became very clear as I started reading The Cellar. The book, a novella that stops short of being a full-fledged novel, is a gripping psychological roller coaster, compulsively readable and often suspenseful, although not in the usual sense, given how the circumstances play out. The story begins when the Songolis, a family of African immigrants to the U.K., find their youngest son Abiola missing, after having failed to turn up post school. They summon the cops, but not before dressing up Muna and masquerading her as their daughter.

Muna finds this sea change, this reversal of fortune, too good to be true, and at the same a welcoming respite from the domestic and sexual abuse she had endured all her life ever since she was 'rescued' from an orphanage by Mrs. Songoli to work for them as a slave. And as the Songolis hop from one misfortune to the other, she decides it's time to put her macabre plan into motion, with little help from the Devil. The story, once it enters this revenge territory, becomes predictable. You know what her plans are, and how sadistic they are. Yet there's an element of suspense nevertheless, partly because you wonder if Muna will get away with what she does, and also because you want to know how all of this will end for the Songolis. And it does end, rather too abruptly and conveniently, leaving us with a sense of wanting more.