A review by varunob
Missing, Presumed Dead by Kiran Manral

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

 What were to happen if you were to vanish into thin air one fine day? Who would go looking for you? Why would you have disappeared? Would someone have found you? Would anyone actually care? Questions such as these rush through your head as you flip/swipe through the pages of Missing, Presumed Dead, eager to know what exactly has happened to Aisha, the protagonist of the novel, and what is going to happen to everyone around her when she walks out of the house one fine day and doesn’t return. 

Mental wellbeing is fast becoming an important topic of conversation today, and Kiran Manral puts it front and centre with her protagonist, establishing that Aisha battles her demons day in day out, always trying to keep them at bay, one way or another. The causes of her illness are unravelled over a period of time through the course of the book, and one comes away understanding the character a lot better than one would have otherwise. The key element here is that Manral refuses to turn the illness into a crutch or use it as an identifier of any kind, nor does she limit Aisha as a character due to the illness, painting the rather cruel reality of mental illness that some people just don’t seem to get – that you can seem to be doing exceptionally well on the surface while being on the verge of going to pieces internally. 

The toll a person’s illness can take on those around them is a theme Manral tackles through Aisha’s husband Prithvi, with whom she shares a barely functional relationship, while highlighting just how normal their lives can be otherwise, highlighted through the bond between Aisha and her two children. 

The few crutches that Manral does employ in the story – the long-lost half-sister turning up out of the blue chief among them – work in the broader scheme of things, and Manral uses to good effect both the setting of the hills, creating an effective aura about the story, as well as genre elements at play. 

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